> It's explicitly saying the NSA has direct access to these companies
It's explicitly saying that the NSA has access to data that would come directly from the relevant company servers, as opposed to having to intercept that data during transmission across the network. (Edit: an intercept is what 'upstream' collection would imply)
The companies themselves are still the ones who end up providing the data to NSA though, just like the fact that my browser obtained your comment "directly from the servers of Hacker News" does not imply that I have direct access to the server hardware underlying HN.
It's explicitly saying that the NSA has access to data that would come directly from the relevant company servers, as opposed to having to intercept that data during transmission across the network. (Edit: an intercept is what 'upstream' collection would imply)
The companies themselves are still the ones who end up providing the data to NSA though, just like the fact that my browser obtained your comment "directly from the servers of Hacker News" does not imply that I have direct access to the server hardware underlying HN.