It was revealed on Thursday, first by the Guardian, then by the Washington Post that a previously undisclosed program called PRISM gave access to the government for files such as chats, emails, stored data, voice traffic, photographs and social networking data from nine major Internet firms.

The information was apparently disclosed by a spy, he validated his information with a top secret 41-slide PowerPoint that identified Microsoft, Yahoo, Google Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, AOL, Skype, and Apple.These companies are listed in the order that they entered into the program according to the Washington Post. Although the sychronization and cloud storage company Dropbox is not on the list, it was allegedly coming soon.

The program was implemented during the GW Bush administration, but continued to grow exponentially under the Obama administration. It replaced the Terrorist Surveillance Program and unlike that previous program, was authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

This new revelation comes only one day after the Administration came under fire when it was disclosed that Verizon was providing a daily log of phone information on every one of their customers.

The PowerPoint presentation dated April 2013 pointed out that 98% of the information that was gathered came from Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google.

When contacted, officials and spokesmen for the various companies denied any knowledge of the program. But the 41-page document made it clear that the identities of the companies were a most sensitive secret and it pointed out that the companies would probably withdraw from the program if exposed.

Thomas Drake, a National Security Agency whistleblower, said in an interview with Democracy Now when asked about this program on Thursday, “This is routine. These are routine orders. This is nothing new. What’s new is we’re actually seeing an actual order. And people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time. It was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records.”

The top U.S. spy chief, Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, defended both the Verizon program as well as the PRISM program in a statement yesterday. Referring to Verizon, he said, “The unauthorized disclosure of a top-secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.”

Clapper also pointed out that the PRISM program is and cannot be used to target U.S. citizens or those living in the United States and stated, “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.”

Jameel Jaffer, the Deputy Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union said that “The program could hardly be more alarming.

Democratic Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden stated, “When law-abiding Americans make phone calls, who they call, when they call and where they call from is private information. As a result of the disclosures that came to light today, we’re going to have a real debate in the Congress and the country that’s long overdue.”