With Silicon Valley's credibility in protecting consumer privacy on the line, many of the largest Web companies on Friday emphasized they aren't giving the U.S. government a direct pipe into their networks as part of a secret program to monitor foreign nationals.
But the denials of involvement by Google Inc., GOOG +1.75% Microsoft Corp.MSFT +2.03% and others, which come at the same time the Obama administration confirmed the existence of such a program, raised questions about how data is ending up in the hands of the government.
The issues are especially acute for companies who make their business by collecting and processing customers' most personal data and secrets.
Google CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a blog post that the company doesn't give U.S. government investigators "open-ended access" to its network and hadn't "joined" a program known as Prism and run by the National Security Agency.
The executives said Google only hands over data based on legally-authorized requests that it reviews individually.
U.S. officials briefed on the matter said Friday that the NSA receives copies of data through a system they set up with a court order. They don't have direct access to the company computers, those people said.
Companies including Apple Inc., AAPL +0.76% Facebook Inc. FB +1.40% andYahoo Inc. YHOO +3.17% all specified in some way that the government doesn't have "direct access" to their networks. But they didn't say whether the government may be indirectly siphoning user information—including subject lines of emails and photos stored online—through an intermediary in response to secret court orders.
One former government official and cybersecurity legal expert said the companies are likely carefully parsing their words. This person said it is likely that the government is able to get copies of data in real-time or near real-time without accessing the Internet companies' central servers.
The Internet companies didn't answer questions about these potential side doors into their data.
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