Yes, but it's still using the term "direct access", which we've seen is the antithesis of forthrightness.
Surveillance is tricky business and technology makes the boundaries of what's acceptable to reveal even trickier. It's true that the muddling of the Verizon/AT&T stories is being interwoven with this, which may not have helped. And the scope of the information requested falls well within acceptable procedure for "traditional" investigations I.E. who contacted whom at what hour on which day. But this isn't a traditional investigation anymore.
In essence, they tried to automate police footwork, which still doesn't fly with a lot of us.
> the term "direct access", which we've seen is the antithesis of forthrightness.
This seems unfair. There was a specific accusation or suggestion of direct access, so it's not (or at least not necessarily) misdirection for Google and friends to specifically deny it. It certainly doesn't answer all questions about PRISM, but between the denial of direct access, and the denial of any Verizon-scale order which would amount to direct access in all but name, you get a pretty forthright statement limiting the possible extent of the NSA data-gathering.
Yes, I read your previous excerpt and I've read this very post here before. Repeating it over and over (this is your 3rd post so far posting this link) doesn't make me believe it any more strongly.
Yet you keep hanging on that they only mention "direct access" and how the denials are similar, it's not about what you believe to be true or not, it's about the things you say that aren't true - here is an example of a denial that does not only include "direct access" but all sorts of access as well.
I don't want to start a flame war with you, but in lieu of repeating what others have already said to you regarding the "direct access" quote (I'm not "hanging on" btw, I have read the other reports as well), I'll just leave this here.
The whole problem with PRISM is that the government potentially can tunnel into company servers and take what they like, and that is being disputed by the accused companies.
I'm not sure what is rumored or not, or what is true or not. My point is that they deny involvement in PRISM, and by PRISM I mean the program that alleges access to company servers.
What are you talking about? Almost every story reporting on this originally said that. The Washington Post backed down, but the originating reporter is still quoting some NSA source(s) as saying it:
'Just one more time: NSA on PRISM: "Collection directly from the servers of these US service providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook.."'[1]
Surveillance is tricky business and technology makes the boundaries of what's acceptable to reveal even trickier. It's true that the muddling of the Verizon/AT&T stories is being interwoven with this, which may not have helped. And the scope of the information requested falls well within acceptable procedure for "traditional" investigations I.E. who contacted whom at what hour on which day. But this isn't a traditional investigation anymore.
In essence, they tried to automate police footwork, which still doesn't fly with a lot of us.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/why-metadata-matters