UNITED STATES tech giant Microsoft was reported to have filed a complaint today after the National Security Agency (NSA) awarded a secretive $10 billion ($7.22bn) contract to its rival Amazon. 

Details of the spy agency’s contract, codenamed WildAndStormy, are not publicly available but it relates to the provision of cloud computing technology to the wider intelligence community.

The US spooks have been attempting to modernise the agency’s repository for classified data, triggering a battle between companies, including Microsoft, to win cloud computing contracts.