"Twitter declined to make it easier for the government. But other companies were more compliant..."

"... according to people briefed on the negotiations," writes Claire Cain Miller in the NYT.

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....

While handing over data in response to a legitimate FISA request is a legal requirement, making it easier for the government to get the information is not, which is why Twitter could decline to do so....

[I]nstead of adding a back door to their servers, the companies were essentially asked to erect a locked mailbox and give the government the key, people briefed on the negotiations said....

Read the whole thing. I found it telling that the NYT threw in — amidst all the legal and technical things — this paragraph:

Even as the White House scrambled to defend its online surveillance, President Obama was mingling with donors at the Silicon Valley home of Mike McCue, Flipboard’s chief, eating dinner at the opulent home of Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist, and cracking jokes about Mr. Khosla’s big, shaggy dogs.

And with that, I feel the mainstream tide turning against Obama. The meaning of the famous smile has changed.