Just how Much Did Tech Companies Play Footsie With the NSA?
...SAN FRANCISCO — When government officials came to Silicon Valley to demand easier ways for the world’s largest Internet companies to turn over user data as part of a secret surveillance program, the companies bristled. In the end, though, many cooperated at least a bit.

Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They opened discussions with national security officials about developing technical methods to more efficiently and securely share the personal data of foreign users in response to lawful government requests. And in some cases, they changed their computer systems to do so. ...

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said. ...

While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so....

...U.S. Internet companies that want to resist government demands to hand over customer data for intelligence investigations have few legal options, due to the classified nature of such probes and a court review process shrouded in secrecy.

Google Inc, Facebook Inc and Microsoft Corp are among the big U.S. technology companies that were outed this week as key sources of data for the National Security Agency (NSA), under a surveillance program referred to inside the spy agency as Prism.

While the companies have uniformly denied knowledge of Prism and said they had not given the NSA direct access to their servers, U.S. officials have confirmed the existence of the program, which President Barack Obama defended as "a modest encroachment" on privacy that was necessary to protect national security. ...

For electronic service providers, the law says the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington can authorize a company to provide "all information, facilities, or assistance necessary." In return for compliance, the company is compensated for its work and receives immunity from potential lawsuits.

Section 702 is a "broad tool to get the information they are looking for," said Matt Zimmerman, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco civil liberties group critical of the law....