news.ycombinator.com• Jun 9, 2013• 1 min read
Ask HN: What does "direct access" mean?I have seen the complete and comprehensive looking statements by companies indicating that they do not allow "direct access" etc. On the other hand, looking at the Guardian's slide[0], I see the line "Collection directly from these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple."Admittedly, I'm confused. Why would the NSA claim direct collection, while companies reiterate no "direct access"? What's going on there?I can think of a few ways to deal with this:a) Google/FB/Yahoo are unaware at top levels (Larry, Matt Cutts, whoever) of the information they expose, presumably due to a gag order or other legal mechanism on those actually facilitating the exposure.b) G/F/Y are aware at top levels, but consider collection indirect, or not vast, and the NSA PowerPoint creator does not share the same definition. For instance, perhaps G/F/Y consider access "indirect" because it complies with a court order which has been reviewed, or because selecte