NSA's Prism surveillance program: how it works and what it can do  —  Slide from secret PowerPoint presentation describes how program collects data ‘directly from the servers’ of tech firms  —  • Obama deflects criticism over NSA surveillance  —  Since Prism was first revealed …

Tech Companies, Bristling, Concede to Federal Surveillance Program  —  When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world's largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled.

No evidence of NSA's ‘direct access’ to tech companies  —  Sources challenge reports alleging National Security Agency is “tapping directly into the central servers.”  Instead, they say, the spy agency is obtaining orders under process created by Congress.  —  The National Security Agency …

From +David Drummond, Chief Legal Officer: We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box.  Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media.  It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise.

Cowards  —  Will not one tech CEO stand up and tell the truth?  —  The NSA story of the secret assassination of the Fourth Amendment continues to unfold.  Today we heard from Google CEO Larry Page and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.  —  Page was confused (the title of his post is “What the...?).

Tech Giants Built Segregated Systems For NSA Instead Of Firehoses To Protect Innocent Users From PRISM  —  The NSA may have wanted full firehoses of data from Google, Facebook and other tech giants, but the companies attempted to protect innocent users from monitoring via compliance systems …

Solving the mystery of PRISM  —  What exactly is PRISM?  How does it work?  Who uses it?  Let's assume that the companies whose data is sucked in by a National Security Agency tool called PRISM are denying their knowledge of the word and its associations in good faith.

Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveillance story  —  The past few days have seen a blizzard of leaks about surveillance activity by the government's ultra-secret NSA arm, including data collection from phone companies and internet giants.  Here is what you need to know about this developing story.

US Gov't: PRISM Isn't Data Mining System, Doesn't Pull Data Off Servers  —  The United States government has declassified details of its “PRISM” program today, saying it is not a wide-spread data mining system and doesn't “unilaterally” pull information off tech company servers.