This. THIS. This a hundred times over. If I could give this a thousand upvotes I would. It actually makes sense to have a place to put the stuff that these agencies might be requesting from the companies. What else are they going to do? mail a CD? email a zip file? Wouldn't it make sense to just have a spot that is secure and give the various agencies access and then copy over anything they've requested (and granted access to) for them to collect at their leisure. An FTP site. A Dropbox-like thing.
But sadly, this one will get lost in the sea of panic.
If you can submit a query by email address and get a Google Takeout or Facebook graph style data dump back, what does it really matter how many pieces of equipment or API layers are between the request and the database?
Your Facebook profile page itself doesn't have "direct access" to Facebook's "central" servers, it goes through several application layers, not to mention several intermediary server and networking layers. So what?
I haven't seen any dispute of "email address > data dump", and as far as I'm concerned, arguing about the directness of the word direct (when even front end vs back end is hazy on HN) is just distraction.
This article is just hand waving. If an agent who wants info can put in an email address and get out user info, it's a distinction without a difference.
But sadly, this one will get lost in the sea of panic.