MOSCOW, June 7 (RAPSI) - Alexei Pushkov, Head of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, believes that the servers of major IT companies are being kept under constant surveillance by US intelligence services.

"US special services have direct access to the servers of nine of the largest Internet companies including Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo," he tweeted on Friday. "This is systematic, constant surveillance."

The US National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have tapped directly into the servers of most of the web's largest companies - Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple - through NSA's PRISM program, The Washington Post reported.

The leading Internet companies have denied the reports.

"We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. "Any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."

Microsoft said it does not voluntarily participate in any government data gathering, even if the government has a nationwide program.  Yahoo, Facebook and Google have also denied the allegations.