Well Greenwald has already screwed up what NSA jargon for "directly from the servers" means and about tripled-down on it, so for future news releases I'm definitely going to have to look at the source itself and not Greenwald's spin on it.

You simply can't build the system that does what Greenwald claims for $20 million. You can build a drop box + FISA API for that amount though, but that would mean Greenwald is incorrect (or lying, take your pick) and the companies + NSA were telling the truth about that aspect.