If true, that means there's no direct panopticon access, only an expedited, direct, digital means of getting the data, once retrieved, into the government's hands.
Ignoring whether I think a government should be able to ask for this information at all, I think the existence of such direct means is probably on the whole a good thing, because if the british government's repeated losses of laptops and DVDs full on private information are anything to go on, governments really suck at secure data transfer and I'd rather only a government had it than a government -and- whoever managed to steal the thing en route.
I still hope google will continue to challenge the NSL process etc. in court, but I can't say I mind them arranging things in the meantime so as to minimise the odds of the government screwing up the execution of said process.
NSA says that they can use PRISM to get information directly from a company's servers. That's true, but it happens through an intermediary (the company itself). But even with the intermediary the data being sent did come directly from the company.
In other words intelligence agencies like NSA are concerned with the source of intel and in this case there's no middle man. Access to intel is also important to NSA and in this case there is a middle man. "Access to" and "provenance of" intel are separate concepts though and it does Greenwald little credit to allow himself to be confused by it.
Edit: If I was Greenwald I would clarify quickly as well as otherwise he's going to allow the National Intelligence community to turn the debate into technical sticking points that Greenwald is going to lose on, while at the same time turning the debate away from the transparency of these types of intelligence gathering schemes and whether they're necessary at all.