NSA's PRISM Spied On 59,000 Accounts In Six Months
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Four major technology companies, including Google and Yahoo, released formerly-classified data on Monday indicating the scope of the National Security Agency's secret PRISM data collection program.
Yahoo headquarters/via Flickr Creative Commons
ALSO READ: NSA's PRISM Surveillance Program Flouts Fourth Amendment
Following last month's decision in federal court allowing for tech companies to reveal the number of customer data requests received from the federal government, Yahoo reported that in the first six months of 2013 the NSA requested data for between 30,000 to 40,000 user accounts.
According to Wired, the requests were usually made "using classified court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."
ALSO READ: Tech Companies Reach Agreement With Feds Over Data Sharing
Google announced that it had received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests through the surveillance court. Facebook and Microsoft, who also released information on Monday, said that they had received 6,000 and 16,000 requests, respectively.
Technology companies like Microsoft and Google have been pushing for more transparency over their relationships with the federal government, particularly the NSA.
Read more about the NSA PRISM program at Newsweek, Time, and Wired.
Reach Executive Producer Colin Hale here. Follow him on Twitter.
