14 DAY TRIAL // The PRISM spy scandal is far from over. After the initial reports from the Washington Post and The Guardian, all the major tech companies were on defense.
The government acknowledged that such a program, to syphon data from all major tech companies, existed, with Congress oversight, but said that it wasn't as "bad" as the reports made it out to be.
The companies involved came out swinging though, Larry Page titled his response "What the ...?". In it, he made it clear that there was no "direct access" and no "back door" either.
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made a very similar statement and called the reports "outrageous." He said Facebook has never handed out data in bulk to the NSA or to anyone else.
But a report by The New York Times showed that, while they weren't technically lying, they weren't telling the truth either.
The report describes how tech companies collaborated with intelligence companies, voluntarily. While there was no direct access and no bulk data transfers, the companies did have to comply with FISA requests.
Most of these requests come with a gag order, prohibiting them from speaking about the orders. This is why both Page and Zuckerberg asked for "transparency."
All US companies have to comply with these legal orders, but they don't have to make it easy. However, many of them negotiated with the government to provide easier, secure access.
Both Google and Facebook, the report says, were in talks to build a secure portal through which data, provided under the law, could be safely transferred to government agents.
Only Facebook is known for sure to have built such a portal, a "locked mailbox" in which data could be placed for the government to access.
But of the companies asked to cooperate, and all the big ones were, only Twitter refused outright to provide any system which would make it easier for the government to spy on its users.
So, despite the denials, most companies are working with the government to make it easier to respond to legal requests.
The companies also denied that data is shared in bulk. But as the Verizon phone record leak, which sparked this whole scandal, showed, just one request can essentially target all of the users.
The companies may be responding to court orders, but if these orders are for a huge batch of data, it amounts to the same mass scale spying that the original reports on PRISM described.