Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has reportedly claimed that he had no knowledge about the US' National Security Agency (NSA) snooping on the company's data.
Schmidt said that the tapping carried out by the NSA and its UK counterpart, GCHQ, outraged him and other members of Google and they had complained to the US government 'at great length'.
According to the Guardian, the executive chairman denied being briefed about the intrusion and said that had the executives been briefed they couldn't have acted on it.
Schmidt said that the Google had since begun encrypting internal traffic to prevent further spying.
The frenzied release of 'snoop-data requests' from internet companies, including Google, comes amidst the mega revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, who exposed the US' mass surveillance operations on global citizens and leader alike.
Schmidt said that had Snowden not revealed the programmes, the scale of the surveillance operations would have not come to light and they wouldn't have been able to stop the NSA spying.
However, he steered clear of answering in affirmative or otherwise about the question of clemency for Snowden, the report added.