These are the companies alleged to have links to the NSA surveillance scandal

The global surveillance scandal involves many players in the corporate world and — thanks to Edward Snowden — details of their identities and relationships with the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies continue to dribble out. The web firms named in the original Prism scandal are as follows: Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Paltalk, AOL. All have denied giving the NSA “direct access” to their servers, but Snowden has maintained that they do so, and the roles played by these companies are part of the focus of French prosecutors looking into the affair.

Microsoft and many other US tech firms are also alleged to disclose security flaws in their products to US intelligence services before they inform other customers around the world. This would give the NSA and other agencies a headstart on patching their own systems, but it could also give them a window of opportunity to exploit the flaws in order to attack others. The Washington Post published a scoop that gave some insight into one of the most interesting allegations that the NSA, CIA and other US intelligence agencies not only reimburse their partners in the telecommunications industry for the costs incurred in accessing data from their systems, but that some of the telcos also make a profit on the deal. It is uncertain which ones, but AT&T has been named by the Wall Street Journal as being associated with the Blarney program (2013 fiscal year budget, according to Washington Post: $65.96 million). Like AT&T, Verizon is also apparently collaborating with US intelligence on American soil.

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Australia’s Telstra works closely with US intelligence – a condition it had to meet in order to get a Federal Communications Commission license for its Reach business in Asia (which also involves Hong Kong-based PCCW). Such conditions appear to be a recurring theme when it comes to international firms merging or going into partnership with US operators, or operators with cables in the US as well, such as: Japan’s SoftBank, Deutsche Telekom, and Vodafone (the Verizon partnership).