Silicon Valley firms deny giving government broad access to data

The top executives of Google, Facebook and other Silicon Valley firms on Friday fiercely denied they gave intelligence officials broad access to data about their users. The statements sharply contradict the language in a National Security Agency document, cited by The Washington Post and the British newspaper the Guardian, that described the companies’ participation in a secret surveillance program called PRISM.

The NSA document referred to “collection directly from the servers” of nine Internet companies. The conflict between the PRISM document and the company statements could be the result of imprecision by the author of the NSA documents. Another classified report obtained by The Post described the arrangement as allowing “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than direct access to company servers. Technology and security experts offered other explanations, with some arguing that the firms had carefully crafted their denials to leave open the possibility that they had participated in PRISM in some way. Several noted the similarity in the language of the company statements. Nearly all of the companies cited in the NSA documents said the government does not have “direct access” to their servers. But that leaves open the possibility that the government has indirect access to their technology, security experts said.