Earlier reports have stated that the government is mining data from nine US tech giants which includes Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, AOL and PalTalk with Dropbox soon joining the alliance.

It’s worth noting that Twitter is missing from from the lineup, but that’s not entirely surprising since the microblogging service is quite apprehensive in aiding the government in its intrusion efforts.  But who’s to say that Twitter won’t be jumping onto this wagon anytime soon?  As SiliconANGLE’s Mike Wheatley pointed out, Twitter is not entirely “squeaky-clean” as it complied with 57 percent of the 1,009 government requests for data that it received.

PRISM sees all

PRISM is described as a program that gives direct access to the NSA and the FBI to extract “a vast number of online commercial services, audio, video, photos, emails documents and connection logs.”  By accessing these data, investigators get a profile of a person based on movements and contacts over time.

Hours after it was reported, some of the companies who allegedly allow the NSA to mine data released statements denying the reports, stating that they value their users’ privacy and would never participate in such activity unless presented with warrants.

But do the corporate denials count for anything?  This is corporate America we’re talking about.  And it’s unlikely the government would just hand out the names of participants either, as ACLU analyst Christopher Soghoian pointed out.

“Internet companies denying knowledge of PRISM is a total non-denial. NSA wouldn’t give the name of the program to Internet companies,” Soghoian tweeted.

Joining Kristin Feledy in this morning’s NewsDesk is SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto with his Breaking Analysis on why companies have denied involvement on PRISM.

“This certainly could be a matter of protocol that if the program details had somehow emerged that companies are to deny that it exists but the genie’s out of the bottle now and there’s gonna be a lot of questions about this.  There’s some notions here that the NSA would not have released details of the program name to those internet companies that were participating in the program.  Furthermore, those that received national security letters, the belief is, that they would be prevented from discussing their existence legally,” Casaretto stated.

Casaretto also stated that if this program does exist, it only means that user privacy no longer exists. And if companies who willingly participated in PRISM have undermined their relationship with their users.

For more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis on the government’s intrusion in people’s lives, check out the NewsDesk video below:

photo credit: Frederic Poirot via photopin cc