Zuckerberg and Page Lied, Twitter Defied

Both Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page lied to the American public. So says the New York Times;

The companies that negotiated with the government include Google, which owns YouTube; Microsoft, which owns Hotmail and Skype; Yahoo; Facebook; AOL; Apple; and Paltalk, according to one of the people briefed on the discussions. The companies were legally required to share the data under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. People briefed on the discussions spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited by law from discussing the content of FISA requests or even acknowledging their existence.
In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.

One wonders how much longer Google bloggers will be able to post criticism of the Obama administration. For the record Twitter did not cave which raises the question just how much of Google's, Facebook's et al cooperation was voluntary.