So far the only evidence of that is a wired article [1] with anonymous sources, even those source were not 100% sure about it.
Since then wired has posted another article [2] claiming the access have been revoked after announcements from senior officials, which again is from anonymous sources.
I'm really skeptical of these anonymous sources tbh.
You don't need read-write access for auditing. You don't need root/admin-level privileges.