Will PRISM damage tech companies’ reputations for privacy?

Privacy is a big selling point for tech firms, particularly those that are asking to host your personal data. That’s what’s so potentially damaging about reports from The Washington Post and the Guardian that the U.S. government has broad access to data of nine leading Internet firms as part of a surveillance program known as PRISM.

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook have denied that they have granted the government access to their servers. But the fallout from the revelation of PRISM — regardless of whether the companies knew about the program — takes some of the shine off of these firms’ reputations. Users have reacted to the revelations with outrage. It’s hard to capture all of the reactions out there, but let’s just say words like “disgusting,” “big brother” and “outrageous” are some of the most common phrases cropping up across the Web. Even those who expected to hear news like this someday seem disappointed.