Apple denies allowing US Govt access to data in PRISM program

by Kenny Hemphill on June 7, 2013

Apple has denied being involved in a scheme which allows the US National Security Agency access to users’ personal data held on the servers of some of the world’s biggest technology companies.

The Mac-maker was named in reports by The Guardian and Washington Post as one of several companies, along with Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft who participate in a program known as PRISM.

Apple replied to an enquiry from CNN saying: ‘We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers.’

According to the reports, PRISM is a previously undisclosed program operated by the NSA which came to light earlier this week, following a ‘top secret’ court order which granted the NSA access to the customer records of US mobile network, Verizon.

Its existence was discovered when a leaked document was passed to The Guardian, which said it had verified the document’s authenticity. It described PRISM as a program ‘which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats.’

Google, which is claimed to have joined PRISM in 2008, said in a statement: ‘Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.’

Apple is reported to have joined PRISM in 2012.

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  • DaB

    Its probably illegal or against the secret court’s order to reveal you participated in PRISM, because its a secret program and that order is secret. So how can we trust anyone’s claims?!

    Note Google’s circumspect statement – they’re not admitting it. ATT has had NSA taps at many of its telephone hubs for years, all leaked a long time ago – but not admitted by Verizon. None of them admit it! Gee, why is that?!!!

    Apple cannot and would not prove it has provided no access because that’d require 100% public & press access & transparency into ALL its business. And all it’d take is one individual inside any company when handed a secret court order he cannot reveal to anyone, and Gov’t gets its access + company gets deniability.

    Look, the duration, breadth, depth and scale of Gov’t repeatedly lying to us, secret laws, secret rules, secret Presidential declarations/orders etc, secret courts ad nauseam is way way out of proportion to the threat when considering the # of people killed here by international terrorists – but its in direct proportion to the amount of fear that can & has been created. We are more likely to get killed fishing or by a deer – and see the level of Gov’t response to those grave threats.

    And never mind in the US >100k people per year are killed with approved prescription drugs, plus another 160k people per year with medical mistakes – compare the Govt’s response to those actualities with the ‘terrorism’ threat…..

    If this doesn’t clearly indicate something’s seriously wrong here or a different (secret) game’s afoot, well, we’re totally asleep.

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