So when the NSA's internal Top Secret slides say that Apple was added to the PRISM program as a "provider" in October 2012, that provides "Email, chat, videos, photos, stored data, VOIP, file transfers, video conferencing, logins, online social networking details" to the NSA, how then should we reconcile these statements?
Is the NSA lying in its internal slides to itself?
Is Tim Cook lying in his statement to the external world?
Is Tim Cook splitting hairs in some fashion? For instance, is he defining "backdoor" to mean "illegal backdoor", which therefore excludes everything done with the FBI/NSA under a veneer of legality?
People really want to make something out of this, but it's very simple: the NSA found the "goto fail" bug and exploited it. (We know they also exploited heartbleed.)
We know they have active programs looking for holes in open source code and fuzzing commercial services looking for vulnerabilities. How is that so hard to believe?
Based on the public reporting, PRISM collects data via FISA-authorized requests to companies. So Apple is probably covering it in their short paragraph about "National Security Orders from the U.S. government."
Is the NSA lying in its internal slides to itself?
Is Tim Cook lying in his statement to the external world?
Is Tim Cook splitting hairs in some fashion? For instance, is he defining "backdoor" to mean "illegal backdoor", which therefore excludes everything done with the FBI/NSA under a veneer of legality?