But it seems like that still has all the ambiguity I mentioned. It could still be construed as root level access, or an FTP server, or anything in between.
Also realize that Glenn Greenwald shares a good amount of blame for this misquote. The first line in the first article about PRISM is "The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...)
The problem is with Greenwald / Snowden - they needed to provide indisputable evidence regarding their most garish claims; or `direct access` to a representation of the evidence
> Also realize that Glenn Greenwald shares a good amount of blame for this misquote
I agree, and have said as much multiple times.
But that's no reason to continue to perpetuate the usage of a semantically-different variant of the original quote, especially with all the other data we have on PRISM now that can help disambiguate what the original quote could reasonably be construed as.
Compared to data intercepted from "upstream", any data sent in response to a FISA request would be "directly from company X's servers". That doesn't necessarily imply that the NSA has direct access to the servers.
How about "collection directly from the server of..." just like it appeared in the actual slide, instead of 'direct access' as everyone else misquotes it?