These two quotes refer to different things. The first refers to PRISM, which gives the US a privileged position as it involves companies bound by US law, howeve

These two quotes refer to different things. The first refers to PRISM, which gives the US a privileged position as it involves companies bound by US law, however, all participating companies denied it involved direct access to their data. See the quotes in the wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Initial_public_statements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#I... From the slides; it appears it works by the agencies (via the FBI DITU) sending the cooperating company a selector (e.g. email address), and then those companies sending back the actual material (e.g. emails); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/media/File:Prism-slide-7.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/media/File:Prism-slide-6.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/... From transparency reports it is clear that the receiving company can see how many selectors are coming in and how much data is being "exfiltrated" under this scheme (and it is roughly 10,000 targets). --- The second quote refers to a program of passive surveillance which - while probably the most underhand thing revealed by Snowden - did not rely on any privileged position of the US government, and could have been pulled off by an adversarial nation as well. It didn't rely on the cooperation of those companies, and in fact they were outraged by it and implemented encryption in an attempt to thwart it.