14 DAY TRIAL // As the Prism spy scandal drags on, with the latest report from The New York Times shedding more light into the matter and possibly explaining how all the tech companies, which are denying any knowledge of Prism, aren't technically lying but aren't telling the truth either, Google is once again on the defensive.
"We cannot say this more clearly—the government does not have access to Google servers—not directly, or via a back door, or a so-called drop box," Google's top lawyer David Drummond explained.
"Nor have we received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media. It is quite wrong to insinuate otherwise," he added.
Google CEO Larry Page, in a post co-written with Drummond, already denied the allegations of the initial Prism report.
The report only said that Facebook had built such a drop box, a portal where government agents could pick up the data they requested, legally. So Google could be telling the truth, technically, again.
But the report focused more on the voluntary collaboration, on adapting a company's internal systems to better suit government needs.
And Drummond only denies that the government has access to the Google servers which, again, is true, but doesn't mean much if the government can simply ask, via court order, for any data it wants.
Drummond also denies that Google complied with blanket orders, like the one Verizon got. Google has indeed been fighting back against government intrusion.
In a lawsuit, kept secret because of the matter at hand, Google tried to fight back against National Security Letters, which request data without a warrant or any court oversight. Google lost that battle, but may be continuing the fight in a more targeted lawsuit.
But even if Google fights back, it doesn't mean it doesn't make it easier to comply with the "targeted" legal requests it gets. In the end, all of this would have been much clearer and much healthier for both the government and the companies involved if the entire process had been been more transparent.