NSA has backdoor access to Internet companies' databases

A top-secret surveillance program gives the National Security Agency surreptitious access to customer information held by Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies, according to a pair of new reports.

This afternoon's disclosure of PRISM follows another report yesterday that revealed the existence of another top-secret NSA program that vacuums up records of millions of phone calls made inside the United States.

Some of the companies named in the pair of news reports responded this afternoon with statements indicating they did not provide direct server access, or PRISM was not as described.