The Director of the U.S. National Intelligence, James Clapper, clarified on Thursday its internet tapping policy saying that the agency targets only "non-US persons."

Earlier, the Guardian and the Washington Post had reported that the U.S. government tapped into the servers of nine Internet firms to collect information about the daily communications of its people within the country and outside the U.S.

The intelligence chief said in a statement that reports by the two news papers about its alleged secret program, PRISM, contained "numerous inaccuracies." However, James Clapper didn't elaborate on what were these "inaccuracies."

Clapper said that the PRISM program was "designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-US persons located outside the United States".

"It cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States," said James Clapper.

Defending the tapping program, the head of National Intelligence said the program was recently reauthorized by the Congress after hearings and debate.

"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," said Clapper.

The PRISM program was established in 2007 and the leaked report obtained by the two papers said that leading companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL Skype, Apple and YouTube participated knowingly in the U.S. government's Internet tapping program.

However, according to BBC News, the leading U.S. Internet giants denied giving government agents direct access to their servers.