Makes sense to me: they can't say the government has no access to their servers because, of course, the US courts could compel access to their servers. They're US companies.
But a running process or piece of hardware sitting in their DC sniffing traffic? No.
It's not just using the phrase 'direct access'. Anyone with half a brain knows that all these CEOs could not have released this responses that are so exactly the same except for choice of words independently. There has to be some explanation, whether it is completely innocent, or otherwise, is the question for me.
One explanation is a coordinated call for transparency. The last paragraph certainly has greater weight when sung in chorus. If you look at the releases of the EFF and Google over the last 48 hours there seems to be a growing plea for this.
Doubt they would be formatted w/ the same structure into four paragraphs, in the same order, with the same exact wording for the important phrases and points, and nothing but phrasing changed for the general talk. Perhaps you do, but I don't believe these two letters, as they are, could have been arrived at independently. I had assumed 99% of people would agree with me. Do most of you feel the same way as drhayes9?
But a running process or piece of hardware sitting in their DC sniffing traffic? No.
That's what I think they're saying, at any rate.
EDIT: One plausible explanation for why everyone keeps using the phrase "direct access" is because it appears in the Guardian story as the first sentence: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-n...