No, you are wrong, this is a pretty egregious mistake. They defined device makers as service providers, and then allowed them to do things that even third parties weren't allowed. Yet they claimed they shut that stuff off to third parties (so they lied by omission). "No, we don't allow third parties anymore to do that kind of stuff" (but there's this large group that can do it, but we aren't calling them third parties). This wasn't just another way to get at the data. The NYT article goes into some detail about what they allowed them to do.