The US National Security Agency has broken into the links that connect Yahoo and Google's data centres, giving it access to the accounts of hundreds of millions of users, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. Citing documents provided by Edward Snowden, who has leaked documents from his time as an NSA contractor to the media in recent months, the newspaper said millions of records were intercepted and sent from Yahoo and Google's networks to the NSA's headquarters.
The programme known as MUSCULAR is separate from a previously disclosed surveillance programme known as PRISM that first prompted outrage about the NSA's activities earlier this year. The technology companies told the Post they were disturbed by the allegations and had not been aware of the activity.