Yahoo Finance Snowden: US And UK 'Hacked Yahoo And Google'
British and US intelligence agencies have tapped into key communications links from Yahoo (Berlin: YHO.BE - news) and Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG - news) data centres around the world, according to a Washington Post report.
The programme is said to collect data at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, including from Americans.
The Post cited documents obtained from former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials.
The programme dubbed MUSCULAR, operated jointly with NSA's British counterpart GCHQ, indicated that the agencies can intercept data flows from the fibre-optic cables used by the US internet giants.
This newspaper suggested it is a secret programme that is unlike PRISM, which relies on court orders to obtain data from technology firms.
Some 181 million records were collected in the prior 30 days, ranging from metadata on emails to content such as text, audio and video, according to a top secret document dated January 9, 2013.
It indicates that the NSA intercept takes place outside the US, and that an unnamed telecommunications provider allowed the secret access.
Acting outside US territory would give the NSA more latitude than within the US where it would require court orders, the Post noted.
NSA chief General Keith Alexander, asked about the allegations during a Washington conference, said he was unaware of the report but argued that the allegations appeared to be inaccurate.
"That (activity) to my knowledge, this never happened," he said at the conference sponsored by Bloomberg Television.
He said: "In fact there was this allegation in June that the NSA was tapping into the servers of Yahoo or Google, that is factually incorrect."
He added that NSA gains access to data "by court order" and that it would not be "breaking into any databases".
Google chief legal officer David Drummond said the company was not involved in any such activity.
He said: "We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links, especially the links in the slide.
"We do not provide any government, including the US government, with access to our systems.
"We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fibre networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform."
Yahoo said in a statement: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centres, and we have not given access to our data centres to the NSA or to any other government agency."
The report comes amid a storm of protest about NSA surveillance both at home and overseas of phone and Internet communications.
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