Maybe they do, but I don't think you can assert that from what the NYT is reporting in that link. The article is talking about FISA requests:
> The companies said they do, however, comply with individual court orders, including under FISA. The negotiations, and the technical systems for sharing data with the government, fit in that category because they involve access to data under individual FISA requests. And in some cases, the data is transmitted to the government electronically, using a company’s servers.
The data sharing is effortless. But the process to get it is still the bottleneck, because in the NYT article, the companies still assert that they conduct a lawyer review of the requests. And, moreover, FISA mandates that when the request involves an American citizen, that a court-approved is required.
If you're arguing that FISA is wrong and that companies should be doing everything they can, including sending the requested data in dot-matrix printouts, to hinder the process -- no argument from me there. But the question at hand is whether they are part of PRISM, which, according to the reports so far, is a program that is different in implementation and legality than FISA.
(And if you want to argue that sending any data upon a legal review is not at all different than direct, near-real-time access to a company's servers...I'm sure some infrastructure engineers would disagree with you, among other kinds of people required to make such a pipeline happen)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843352
They don't have direct backdoor, but they have a system in place for a fast and effortless data sharing.