NSA and FBI tapping servers of leading Internet companies

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, allowing investigators to examine e-mails, photos and other documents that can be used to track people and their contacts over time, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

The highly classified anti-terrorism program, code-named PRISM, had not been disclosed publicly before. A U.S. government source who was not authorized to comment publicly on the program confirmed its existence to Reuters late on Thursday.

The program's participants, the Post said, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley: Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc, Google Inc, Facebook Inc, PalTalk, AOL Inc, Skype, YouTube and Apple Inc.

[link to www.chicagotribune.com]