Google Russia denies giving Washington access to servers

MOSCOW, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Google did not give the U.S. special services access to its servers, head of Google Russia said Wednesday.

"We didn't give the U.S. government or the authorities of any other country direct access to our servers. All claims that we allegedly did it are false," Julia Solovyova told Moscow's business Kommersant daily.

Such requests come regularly but the company only responded to them in accordance with Russian laws, she said. "Google is a commercial company, we work in the legal frames of a country of our presence."

Last week, former CIA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the existence of the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM program, which enables U.S. authorities to tap global Internet traffic, including Google services.

On Tuesday, Ruslan Gattarov, a member of the Russian Federation Council, or upper house of parliament, said that Google Russia had declined an invitation to attend the council's hearings scheduled for Wednesday over the scandal.

Gattarov called for an international inquiry of the reports that Google and other top Internet companies provided the U.S. special services with direct access to their user data.

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