The company continues to claim no involvement with the reported government surveillance program Google has denied involvement in a U.S. government surveillance program called Prism since news broke Thursday that the National Security Agency has been accessing the servers of some of the largest Internet companies, but now company executives insist they had never heard of the program.“We had not heard of a program called Prism until yesterday,” said Google CEO Larry Page and chief legal officer David Drummond in a Friday afternoon blog post. “We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government — or any other government — direct access to our servers,” they stressed.“The U.S. government does not have direct access or a ‘back door’ to the information stored in our data centers,” the executives added.Reports suggesting that Google is providing open-ended access to its users’ data are false, period, the company said. Also, reports claiming that Verizon has received orders to hand over millions of users’ call records are also news to the company, Page and Drummond said.News of the Prism surveillance efforts broke on Thursday in the Washington Post and the Guardian. The surveillance is reported to have taken place since 2007 to mine the data of some of the major Internet companies, such as Google, Yahoo, Apple and Facebook, in an effort to investigate foreign threats to the U.S. Under its official privacy policies, Google does share personal user information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of Google “if we have a good-faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary to meet any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable government request,” among other circumstances.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg followed suit later in the afternoon, offering a similar denial in a public post on Facebook. “Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the U.S. or any other government direct access to our servers,” he wrote.“We have never received a blanket request or court order from any government agency asking for information or metadata in bulk, like the one Verizon reportedly received,” he wrote. “We hadn’t even heard of Prism before yesterday.”Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach’s e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com Related content news Arm patches bugs in Mali GPUs that affect Android phones and Chromebooks The vulnerability with active exploitations allows local non-privileged users to access freed-up memory for staging new attacks. By Shweta Sharma Oct 03, 2023 3 mins Android Security Android Security Mobile Security news UK businesses face tightening cybersecurity budgets as incidents spike More than a quarter of UK organisations think their cybersecurity budget is inadequate to protect them from growing threats. By Michael Hill Oct 03, 2023 3 mins CSO and CISO Risk Management news Cybersecurity experts raise concerns over EU Cyber Resilience Act’s vulnerability disclosure requirements Open letter claims current provisions will create new threats that undermine the security of digital products and individuals. By Michael Hill Oct 03, 2023 4 mins Regulation Compliance Vulnerabilities feature The value of threat intelligence — and challenges CISOs face in using it effectively Knowing the who, what, when, and how of bad actors and their methods is a boon to security, but experts say many teams are not always using such intel to their best advantage. By Mary K. Pratt Oct 03, 2023 10 mins CSO and CISO Advanced Persistent Threats Threat and Vulnerability Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe