A day after it was revealed that the National Security Agency had requested the phone records of all Verizon customers, details of secret NSA and FBI program called PRISM were leaked. The program, originally set up in 2007, gathered Internet data from all Americans with the cooperation of some of the biggest Internet companies in the world.

The Washington Post obtained a PowerPoint presentation that explained how the program worked. The presentation shows that the program is still in use, since it is dated April 2013.

The Guardian, which broke the Verizon story, also obtained the documents.

According to the Post, the document shows that PRISM aims to create a “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”

The program dates back to 2007, stemming from President George W. Bush’s warrantless wiretaps. Once news of that program leaked, Bush was lead to look for other surveillance options. Congress passed the Protect America Act in 2007 and the amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were passed in 2008. Those amendments gave any company that voluntarily gave data to the government immunity. Microsoft was the first partner in PRISM.

On Thursday night, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper issued a statement to the Post, justifying the program while also criticizing its leaking. He also said there were errors in the Guardian and Post reports, but wasn’t specific.

Clapper said that “information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.”

“I would just push back on the idea that the court has signed off on it, so why worry?” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions. It has never been an effective check on government.”

As for the companies named in the documents, many of them were quick to say that they had either never heard of it or deny working with the government. Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all said that they do not provide the government with user data.

image: Wikimedia Commons