US politicians voice scepticism on PRISM US members of congress are expressing growing doubts about the way the country's top-secret surveillance programs are managed, even as the top legislators from each party voice confidence in the measures. Emerging from a closed-door briefing with officials from the National Security Agency, the Justice Department and the FBI, some legislators said they had more questions than answers about programs, code-named "PRISM," that sweep up records from phone and internet accounts belonging to millions of people. Democrat Representative Brad Sherman said there "obviously" needs to be more congressional oversight on the telephone surveillance program, under which so-called metadata from mobile phone records are surrendered to the FBI and the NSA on a daily basis. "I did not know a billion records a day were coming under control of the executive branch," Sherman said. Democrat Representative Hank Johnson said that several lawmakers were sceptical about what they were being told about the surveillance programs and the information being collected. "A lot of scepticism, ironically, from folks that voted in favour of it in the first place," he said. The House briefing came hours after eight US senators - six Democrats and two Republicans - introduced legislation that would require the US attorney general to make public secret decisions of the court that grants permission for collection of such records. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has rejected only 11 such applications among the more than 30,000 cases it has considered since it was founded in 1979. "Americans deserve to know how much information about their private communications the government believes it's allowed to take under the law," Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley said. But they were met with a torrent of opposition as Senate leaders, as well as much of the rank and file, vigorously defended the programs in a sign of how difficult it would be in congress to change the law that governs such surveillance. In a rare display of bipartisanship, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell found themselves on the same side in defending the programs. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he was opposed to the legislation from the eight senators. "The whole point is to have judicial oversight without telling our enemies," he said. Why don't we just take ads out in the paper and tell al-Qaeda this is the way we're following you around. Do you have any problems? Call us. This is ridiculous. All the companies and services linked to PRISM - Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo Inc, Apple Inc, AOL Inc, Paltalk, Google's YouTube and Microsoft's Skype - have denied giving the US government unfettered access to user data. The companies say they only turn over user data under legally binding orders, and try to regularly resist orders considered to be too broad. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence for the Obama administration, last week confirmed PRISM had been approved by a judge and is being conducted in accordance with US law. He hasn't listed the companies co-operating and those identifications came from the PRISM documents leaked to the Washington Post and the Guardian. Google insists it hasn't been handing over user data on a broad scale, something the company believes it can prove if it receives clearance to disclose the number of requests that have been submitted under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Federal law currently prohibits recipients of FISA requests from revealing information about them. "Google's numbers would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Google has nothing to hide. Microsoft said it also wants to be more forthcoming if the Justice Department would allow it. Ted Ullyot, Facebook's general counsel, said the social networking leader wants to provide "a complete picture of the government requests we receive, and how we respond."