declan submitted his story https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5844091 but it languished.
It's a shame, because it's the first responsible piece of reporting I've seen on this mess. The media has been trolled by a Powerpoint brief from self-important USG bureaucrats.
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 government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box" https://plus.google.com/+google/posts/TMh6gUVrwMq
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]
[1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343423727066824705
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.
[1] http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...