Snowden documents reveal that the NSA tapped Google and Yahoo data centers

UPDATED AT 4:20 p.m.

Alexander may have denied tapping Google and Yahoo but the NSA official response very specifically doesn't do that pic.twitter.com/nCNQH2KOvT

— Stuart Millar (@stuartmillar159) October 30, 2013

UPDATED AT 1:31 p.m.
Gen. Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, disputed claims that the NSA had broken links between Google and Yahoo’s data centers.

“I don’t know what the report is,” Alexander said, adding the NSA is “not authorized” to do this, and instead, must “go through a court process.”

1:18 p.m.
According to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency infiltrates data links in Google and Yahoo’s centers to access hundreds of millions of user accounts, The Washington Post reports:

“According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — ranging from “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.”

The Post also reports that the NSA worked with the GCHQ, its British counterpart, to tap Google and Yahoo’s networks through a project called MUSCULAR, which differs from the court-approved PRISM program that allowed the U.S. government access to Internet companies’ servers. Both Google and Yahoo released statements that said they didn’t give the NSA access to their data centers.