Google has denied any involvement in a secret US government program called PRISM to give the National Security Agency direct access to its servers. In a statement on the company’s official blog, CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond write that the company has not joined any such programme and that the government does not have direct or "back door" access to information store in Google’s data centres. Similar statements were made by Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Page and Drummond write that the company had not heard of a programme called PRISM until the story broke, nor had it heard of a broad type of order received by Verizon that appears to have required the operator to hand over the call records of millions of users. They also insist that Google provides user data to governments only in accordance with the law and refer to its longstanding efforts to develop a more transparent approach to how governments request data for security reasons.
Separately, a former CIA employee, Edward Snowden, has identified himself as the source of the intelligence leaks to the Guardian and Washington Post. He said he disclosed the documents to make public what he called a systematic surveillance of innocent citizens. Snowden told the Washington Post from his current location in Hong Kong that he was seeking asylum "from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimisation of global privacy".
