The NY Times published a correct description of PRISM very shortly after Greenwald's published his insane misread. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-compani...

This description matches the declassified PRISM documents, the description in Snowden's leaked slides, US law, the miniscule price tag in Snowden's slides, and the description of a specific PRISM integration I heard from one of the implementers (possibly one interviewed in the nytimes story).

I believe he is referring to XKeyscore, not PRISM, which is as insane as it sounds, unless you believe the NSAs denial.

No, he is very clearly referring to Greenwald's PRISM fantasy. From the article: "Caught red-handed last year making petabytes of personal data available to the U.S. intelligence community through the PRISM program...."

You are arguing semantics and I'm talking about what the NSA is actually capable of. Please read this paragraph:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore#Capabilities

The original story tries to implicate Google in opening their servers for "full take" data feed.

XKeyscore was a program to analyse data siphoned from wiretaps. This is what caused that infamous ppt slide "SSL Removed Here ;-)" which, among other reasons, caused Google to start encrypting all of the inter-data center links.

You are arguing about a program that has nothing to do with Assange's thesis that Google is an arm of the US State Department. This isn't merely semantics.