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The terseness of each of these all but confirms it.

So you'd be more likely to believe them if they were verbose? Most of them are fairly direct denials. That's not to say that they're necessarily true, but they don't seem like especially weasely statements.

I'd be more likely to believe that the substance of the story wasn't true if they denied the substance (the scope of information provided), rather than peripheral inferences made in the story about the procedure and mechanics by which the information gets to the NSA.

Given the actual denials, I will assume that, at a minimum, everything about the story that they didn't deny -- that is, the scope of the customer data which has been provided by those providers to the NSA -- is implicitly confirmed, and that the (mostly irrelevant) details they have denied are in doubt.

What's wrong with the media in the U.S. is that they let these finely parsed denials stand, reporting them verbatim or worse summarizing as "the companies deny it".

We need press that is capable of communicating the grey areas as you did in your top comment here, ideally in a way the masses can grok.

If you’re forced to lie you only say what you’re obliged to say. Normally when companies face PR crises they release full page press releases full of fluffy assurances and marketing speak.

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