Washington - Google has expressed outrage following a report that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has hacked its data links. An executive at Google said it was not aware of the alleged activity, adding there was an "urgent need for reform". The comments follow a Washington Post report based on leaks from Edward Snowden claiming that the NSA hacked links connecting data centres operated by Google and Yahoo. The NSA's director said it had not had access to the companies' computers.
Gen Keith Alexander told Bloomberg TV: "We are not authorised to go into a US company's servers and take data." But correspondents say this is not a direct denial of the latest claims. The revelations stem from documents leaked by ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and is wanted in the US in connection with the unauthorised disclosures.
The documents say millions of records were gleaned daily from the internet giants' internal networks. They suggest that the NSA intercepted the data at some point as it flowed through fibre-optic cables and other network equipment connecting the companies' data centres, rather than targeting the servers themselves.
The data was intercepted outside the US, the documents imply. The data the agency obtained, which ranged from "metadata' to text, audio and video, were then sifted by an NSA programme called Muscular, operated with the NSA's British counterpart, GCHQ, the documents say.
The NSA already has "front-door" access to Google and Yahoo user accounts through a court-approved programme known as Prism. Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said Google did not provide any government with access to its systems. (FA)
