Surveillance of Americans by the National Security Agency and the FBI apparently goes beyond phone records. The Washington Post is reporting that these federal agencies are also tapping the servers of nine large U.S. tech companies, including Google, Apple, Yahoo, and Facebook.

The large scale secret program, called PRISM, began in Dec. 2007 and collects search history, email content, file transfers, live chats and other online activity, according the Guardian.

Chester Wisniewski of the cyber security firm Sophos, says the news validates widespread suspicions.

“There has never been anything as concrete as we’ve seen in the last 24-hours to say, ‘ok, this is really happening, we’re not just lunatics’,” Wisniewski says.

To hear more about PRISM, click on the audio player above.