I'm not interested in the semantic argument. Emily Bazelon called The Guardian out this week on the Slate political podcast, as have many others; this is now a mainstream criticism of how The Guardian reported the story.
Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far.
I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have.
Either way: the original notion that NSA had direct access to the servers that actually operate Google Mail has been found to be unsupported by the evidence published thus far.
I call this out continuously and obnoxiously on HN because it is very much not the mainstream view on HN; most of the people commenting on the NSA story on HN say things that make it clear that they believe NSA continues to have the direct access to Google's systems that Google and the Guardian say they do not have.