Tech companies are cooperating with U.S. intelligence agencies more than you think

The latest bold claims made in the US National Security Agency's leaked PowerPoint presentation on its PRISM internet surveillance program suggest that the agency is able to monitor communications in realtime, despite earlier avid denials by tech companies. The government may also be accessing much information without tech companies' explicit knowledge, but a pair of even newer reports in Bloomberg and Reuters indicate that many big tech companies actually knowingly cooperate much more extensively with US intelligence agencies than previously acknowledged.
 Tech firms including Microsoft are said to voluntarily give advanced warning to the US government of vulnerabilities in software products sold to governments overseas before they are patched, allowing US agencies to effectively use them to conduct foreign surveillance. Microsoft's corporate vice president of corporate communications Frank X. Shaw confirmed to Bloomberg that the company tips-off multiple government agencies to vulnerabilities, but said this was designed for risk assessment and management.           ***Read article at THE VERGE***