Google CEO Larry Page has flatly denied involvement in a secret spy program operated by the National Security Agency, calling into question recent news reports that alleged the company gave spooks a backdoor into its servers.
Google's statement was also signed by David Drummond, the company's top legal officer, who oversees the entire legal department.
PRISM gives the federal government surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to reports from the Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers yesterday.
The program, code-named PRISM, allegedly allows NSA analysts to peruse exabytes of companies' confidential user data by typing in search terms. PRISM reports have been used in 1,477 items in President Obama's daily briefing last year, according to an internal presentation to the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate that the newspapers obtained.
Those allegations about companies' participation in PRISM remain unconfirmed, and thecompanies listed in the supposed presentation have denied any participation. Today's statement from Page, Google's co-founder, is the most detailed to date -- and, crucially, comes from someone who would be in a position to know or investigate rather than an unnamed corporate spokesman who would not be...
Read the full story here. Source: CNET
