NSA muzzle should be removed from Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo

[Commentary] The National Security Agency spying scandal and the way it runs through Silicon Valley "is the story that just won't go away.”

Details -- some accurate, some not -- of the government's snooping continue to trickle out. Many of us continue to wonder just what the government has scooped up about us from our go-to social networking and search companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple. And some of us wonder just what those companies have done to try to protect our privacy. It's the last question that has become my personal obsession. The feds and the commercial keepers of the Internet have said all the right things to make us feel better. When several news outlets were reporting that the NSA through a program called Prism was tapping directly into the servers of search engines and social media sites, executives said that was not the case. The NSA explained that it was only targeting foreign suspects and only with the authorization of a top-secret court. But does any of that put you at ease? Me neither. The problem is that it's going to be hard for Silicon Valley companies to maintain or regain that trust if the federal government continues to muzzle them.