It's a pretty significant difference. Even with the rubber stamp, the US Govt is limited to what they've asked for and received. With direct access, they coul

It's a pretty significant difference. Even with the rubber stamp, the US Govt is limited to what they've asked for and received. With direct access, they could have pulled everything. In the case of Verizon/AT&T - the Government has everything, and, in the event of a new law/govt/executive branch - they would be able to do anything with the data they had already collected. I was very concerned that US Govt had access had direct access to Google/Facebook servers. I'm not particularly worried about their ability to do authorized requests for user information. Hopefully Verizon/AT&T will now transition to the same place as google/facebook are - having those entire databases of all telephone data is ripe for abuse, regardless of what claims they might make about safeguards are in place.