Microsoft to Yahoo Security Shows Snowden Won Where Obama Failed

Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden succeeded where President Barack Obama couldn’t -- getting Microsoft Corp., Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. to upgrade computer security against hackers.

The companies are adopting harder-to-crack code to protect their networks and data, after years of largely rebuffing calls from the White House and privacy advocates to improve security. The new measures come after documents from Snowden revealed how U.S. spy programs gain access to the companies’ customer data -- sometimes with their knowledge, sometimes without -- and that’s threatening profits at home and abroad.