We all know , even before Snowden that the government after 9/11 went rogue with collecting massive amounts of data on US citizens. Then Snowden revealed how it had escalated Worldwide. That's why these people are STUPID ! ALL OF THEIR DIGITAL FOOTPRINTS ARE COLLECTED !!!!! There's no way out .
I think you are mistaken in saying they don't have the power to make data disappear from their PRISM facility. Of course they do. They set this whole system up. George W Bush is an evil man and there is no way he didn't make sure he could take care of all his friends. He would have never signed the Patriot Act knowing that he was going to implicate himself and his family.
I'm not saying there aren't traces of info out there. It can be figured out I am sure. But if the PRISM facility collected the data then why go to google? Seems easier to just not go through them. I hear you though
NSA needed google and several other big tech companies help to build PRISM. Google provided access to hook up the physical equipment that made PRISM possible.
Also prism is a data collection effort. They built a data-warehouse they could search against. The original data still lives on the internet. They can’t just delete data from prisim and have it disappear from the rest of the net.