That would fit more in line with what we have heard about the tapping stations/rooms at AT&T/Verizon over the years.
I mean if they were really involved with back dooring the individual servers of google/apple/facebook that would involve hundreds of employees at each company to make that happen. Someone would have spoken out by now with some evidence to prove it.
To my knowledge that hasn't happened. Just this shitty looking powerpoint outlining when the data was starting to come in...
Those lines were for things like data replication so it was a goldmine for the NSA to tap. Those transmissions have since been encrypted.
> Prism in general was mischaracterized by the early reports. It was first reported as a persistent backdoor into servers, but it was actually just a way for NSA to automate requests for information through the FBI. This was detailed in later reports.
> Edit: for those skeptical about my comment above, here is more detail from a discussion about a year ago:
The slides imply Apple gives access to data on customers. Tim Cook says Apple does not give access to their servers. Is that really the point you're trying to make?
That's just semantics and weasel words, nothing more.