It's not just the servers. In fact, PRISM was one of 5 programs disclosed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Upstream_slide_of_the_PRIS...

FAIRVIEW, BLARNEY, and two whose names were redacted exist in addition to PRISM. They are tapping the pipes and grabbing stuff off of the server.

They can pretty much have whatever they want.

themckman's question is a valid one though. So far, almost everything we know about the NSA's surveillance capabilities seem to come from those leaked slides, and frankly, I don't think a couple of slides are going to be technically accurate. The truth is, we simply do not know the real extent of the NSA's reach.

>I haven't followed the NSA Prism story as closely as maybe I should have, but I'm curious: is this TRUE?

it is the "least untruthful statement".

> or, is it more like, we can't be sure what they do and don't have access to, therefore, it's better to assume the worst?

it is just hard to imagine how they don't have access to something. They obviously capable of accessing everything they want. Thus if they don't access something, it would mean they don't want to. Ed absurdum.

Interesting piece of history btw:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Hellman#Computer_privacy...

"Hellman has been a long-time contributor to the computer privacy debate. He and Diffie were the most prominent critics of the short key size of the Data Encryption Standard in 1975. An audio recording survives of their review of DES at Stanford in 1976 with Dennis Branstad of NBS and representatives of the National Security Agency.[12] Their concern was well-founded: subsequent history has shown not only that NSA actively intervened with IBM and NBS to shorten the key size ..."

Of course it isn't true

Because Google is well known for deleting data rather than storing and mining it?

Not sure how that's relevant to "Once your emails get into google servers, the NSA has made a copy of them. NSA copies your emails before you even read them"?

Also, please explain how you would implement a webmail service without storing emails.

It's relevant to the idea that if an email enters Google, it's probably accessable to the NSA, even if you delete it. I was directly responding to:

"is it indisputable fact that the NSA has all your email, or, is it more like, we can't be sure what they do and don't have access to"

They don't need to have second hand copies of the mail when they can just tell Google to give them access.

"implement a webmail service without storing emails." is not relevant to anything I said.