New files leaked by the Guardian reveal that the United States government compensated major tech companies that signed up to participate in the controversial NSA spying program known to us as Prism.
The Guardian on Friday published new Edward Snowden showing that the US National Security Agency has spent millions of dollars to ensure that the biggest names on the internet would support the international surveillance programs revealed by Snowden.
According to Snowden's files and Ewen MacAskill, the NSA has paid millions of dollars to Google, Yahoo, Microsoft , and Facebook to share the information they collect in their databases with the federal government.
“The records provide the first evidence of the financial relationship between tech companies and the NSA,” MacAskill wrote.
The Guardian article cites a top-secret NSA document from December 2012 in which the agency said in a newsletter that it spent millions to get technology companies to cooperate with the government after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA )ruled that the collection of information from Americans through the PRISM program violated the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.
“Last year’s problems led to multiple extensions of certification expiration dates that cost Prism providers millions of dollars to implement each successive extension. The costs are covered by the Special Operations Fund,” the file states.
Facebook has denied that it has received any compensation from the US government for facilitating the flow of personal data.
A Google spokesperson told the Guardian newspaper: “We await the US government’s response to our request for publication of the NSA requests, which would demonstrate our compliance with US law.”
However, we do not expect acceptance from the internet giants, as acceptance makes them collaborators of the secret service, and even for a fee.
