After that the U.S. National Security Agency and the FBI secretly scour Internet usage data, several tech companies were asked to respond to questions about whether they participate and hand over information.
Here is what some of the reportedly involved companies had to say:
Apple
"We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order."
Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told
AOL
"We do not have any knowledge of the Prism program. We do not disclose user information to government agencies without a court order, subpoena or formal legal process, nor do we provide any government agency with access to our servers."
AOL statement provided to
"When Facebook is asked for data or information about specific individuals, we carefully scrutinise any such request for compliance with all applicable laws, and provide information only to the extent required by law."
Facebook's chief security officer told The
"First, we have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government鈥攐r any other government鈥攄irect access to our servers....Second, we provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don鈥檛 follow the correct process."
CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond
Microsoft
"We provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don鈥檛 participate in it."
posted by Microsoft Corporation on Customer Privacy
Yahoo!
"We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."
Statement from Yahoo provided to
