Honestly, I don't really care about the "direct/indirect" distinction that bothers you: the only real opinion I have on that point is that if Snowden and some anonymous powerpoint junkie can reasonably characterize their access as "direct", then arguing over whether it is in fact "indirect" from some arcane technical perspective is a waste of time.

> when I asked if you disagreed with the post I made above, and you disagreed with only a small part of it

But I don't disagree with your third through fifth statements. I suspect you're wrong to assume that (1) the FISA process is providing reasonable judicial oversight over requests and that (2) providers manually review the appropriateness of individual data requests. As far as the rest goes, this statement of yours is the core point:

> It does not follow logically that because one interpretation of an NSA slide deck is [X] ... that that's the only reasonable interpretation of the slide deck.

Assuming you believe this, I do not understand why you are so hell-bent on attacking Snowden's credibility and dismissing the concerns many other people have raised about excessive surveillance. There are clearly reasonable interpretations of the released materials which make his statements (and those of the NSA and other whistleblowers) perfectly compatible with Google's own statements.