A Taxonomy of PRISM Possibilities

"This would allow the companies involved to make narrow claims about not turning over data directly to the government."

Well there you have it. Even claims such as "we don't have any backdoors", if found to be false, they could later say:

"Oh, we didn't think you meant it like that - but yes, we do provide the government with any information they want from our servers. Why do you ask?"

PR people are very good at spinning stuff like this, and so are the lawyers.