US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250K per day for not handing over user data

[Shawn Knight]

Yahoo has been one of the more transparent tech companies as it relates to privacy ever since whistleblower Edward Snowden stunned the world with his NSA surveillance revelations. In an effort to prove that they didn’t just go along with whatever the US government demanded of it, the Internet pioneer is working to release more than 1,500 pages of once-secret papers from their 2007-2008 challenge to the expansion of US surveillance laws.

A Tumblr post by General Counsel Ron Bell claims the US government amended a key law in 2007 to demand user information from online services. Yahoo refused to comply with what they viewed as unconstitutional and overboard surveillance, instead challenging the government’s authority.

Said challenge, as well as a later appeal, was unsuccessful. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Yahoo to hand over the user data they had originally requested. At one point during the proceedings, the government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 per day if they refused to comply.

Documents pertaining to the lawsuit remained classified until just last year and now that the FISC-R has agreed to unseal the documents at Yahoo’s request, the company is working to make them available to anyone interested in having a look.

Even still, however, Yahoo said some of the documents remain sealed and classified, unknown even to their legal team. Either way, Yahoo considers it an important win for transparency and they hope the records promote informed discussion about the relationship between privacy, due process and intelligence gathering.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/58043-us-government-threatened-to-fine-yahoo-250k-per-day-for-not-handing-over-user-data.html

 

[Snowden]

Thanks, me.

 

[Uncle Al]

I was a staunch advocate of hunting down Snowden and eliminating him in the early days of his release of information, but I must admit that with the amount of information that has been proven and the underhanded tactics of this government, I am now more inclined to nominate him for sainthood! Far too much had been hidden under the auspices of "national security" which is simply no more than an embarrassment to the government and the corruption of the not so Supreme Court continues to degrade the value and practice of the Constitution. Sadly, the more I see the more I expect the US to face it's own Arab Spring one of these days ... something the framers of the constitution may have also anticipated ...

 

[RustyTech]

Thanks, me.

Can we vote for TechSpot to block this account? I highly double the real Snowden would be using his real name and picture.

 

[amstech]

The government forcing Yahoo to hand over data is unconstitutional, illegal and violates privacy rights on about 100 different levels. They should be punished for abusing their power and government officials who don't comply should be hanged in public.

 

[scout2of3]

The government forcing Yahoo to hand over data is unconstitutional, illegal and violates privacy rights on about 100 different levels. They should be punished for abusing their power and government officials who don't comply should be hanged in public.

I agree wholeheartedly. I also think that this government needs a good cleansing.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

I was a staunch advocate of hunting down Snowden and eliminating him in the early days of his release of information, but I must admit that with the amount of information that has been proven and the underhanded tactics of this government, I am now more inclined to nominate him for sainthood! Far too much had been hidden under the auspices of "national security" which is simply no more than an embarrassment to the government and the corruption of the not so Supreme Court continues to degrade the value and practice of the Constitution. Sadly, the more I see the more I expect the US to face it's own Arab Spring one of these days ... something the framers of the constitution may have also anticipated ...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken.

I don't get it... we put up with getting scanned at the airport and having our bags searched by a person before going into a sporting or music event. But when it comes to having your email be searched my a computer program to see if you're emailing someone in Saudi Arabia who's on some watch list, then we get all freaked out about our rights and how invasive our govt is, blah blah blah.

Terrorism isn't just 'over there' anymore and it's not just middle easterners. ISIS has plenty of British and other Europeans on their payroll and just yesterday they convicted an American trying to help them.

You'd think the mass shootings in recent years would be enough to make people care less about surveillance. Every time some wacko goes off and kills a bunch of people everyone laments about 'How did we miss the warning signs?' etc.

I really hope we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

The government forcing Yahoo to hand over data is unconstitutional, illegal and violates privacy rights on about 100 different levels. They should be punished for abusing their power and government officials who don't comply should be hanged in public.

Ha, public execution! Coincidentally, that's exactly the form of govt the jihadists are planning to bring to America. You should be sure to let them know they have your support.

 

[Sludge]

The government forcing Yahoo to hand over data is unconstitutional, illegal and violates privacy rights on about 100 different levels. They should be punished for abusing their power and government officials who don't comply should be hanged in public.

I agree wholeheartedly. I also think that this government needs a good cleansing.

The government's been needing it for decades.

 

[Mister_K]

I was a staunch advocate of hunting down Snowden and eliminating him in the early days of his release of information, but I must admit that with the amount of information that has been proven and the underhanded tactics of this government, I am now more inclined to nominate him for sainthood! Far too much had been hidden under the auspices of "national security" which is simply no more than an embarrassment to the government and the corruption of the not so Supreme Court continues to degrade the value and practice of the Constitution. Sadly, the more I see the more I expect the US to face it's own Arab Spring one of these days ... something the framers of the constitution may have also anticipated ...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken.

I don't get it... we put up with getting scanned at the airport and having our bags searched by a person before going into a sporting or music event. But when it comes to having your email be searched my a computer program to see if you're emailing someone in Saudi Arabia who's on some watch list, then we get all freaked out about our rights and how invasive our govt is, blah blah blah.

Terrorism isn't just 'over there' anymore and it's not just middle easterners. ISIS has plenty of British and other Europeans on their payroll and just yesterday they convicted an American trying to help them.

You'd think the mass shootings in recent years would be enough to make people care less about surveillance. Every time some wacko goes off and kills a bunch of people everyone laments about 'How did we miss the warning signs?' etc.

I really hope we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face.

This is not the case of user end, this is the case of service end which is being "raped" by the Gov.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

This is not the case of user end, this is the case of service end which is being "raped" by the Gov.

Of course it's about the end user. Do you think the American public is coming to the defense of a large corporation because they feel sorry for Yahoo? America has elected a federal govt of the party of big govt and we've demonized corporations as greedy and evil. The only reason that's changed in this case is because this is about the end user and the end users' data. Why else would people care? No one cares if the govt "rapes" a company via taxes and mindless regulation.

 

[psycros]

Brilliant picture. "Police state," indeed. Constant spying on innocent Americans without cause, using SECRET laws and SECRET courts, all without warrants, is exactly the kind of nightmare government we've been warned about for over 100 years. And what do most people do? Maybe complain about it to a co-worker, or post about it online (which instantly gets you onto a watch list, btw). As long as the technocrats have absolute control and the people are too busy or too lazy to present a united, very loud voice of protest nothing will change. Blanket surveillance actually HURTS our counter-terrorism efforts. It creates mountains of pointless data to analyze. The three-letter agencies need to go back to focusing on the most likely threats in order to get useful intelligence into the right hands as quickly as possible. You can still make a difference without even getting up from your computer. Use as much anonymizing software as you possibly can: not only does it help protect you but it also flags your activity. If everyone was using TOR and/or HTTPS anonymous proxies the NSA's flagging would quickly become meaningless. They would be forced to go back to intelligently profiling threats again instead of relying on automated eavesdropping. You can even protect your email to an extent by using a smaller provider instead of one of the big services (I.e. Outlook, AIM, Yahoo and Gmail). If you want to get extreme you can start using encryption such as PGP, although very few people you communicate with will be willing to put up with the extra hassle. Anything we can do to encourage our intelligence agencies to start being *intelligent* again is a win for American security AND freedom.

 

[wiyosaya]

You'd think the mass shootings in recent years would be enough to make people care less about surveillance. Every time some wacko goes off and kills a bunch of people everyone laments about 'How did we miss the warning signs?' etc.

I really hope we're not cutting off our nose to spite our face.

The way I see it, the vast majority of these incidents were perpetrated by someone who has absolutely no association with a known terrorist group, and as such, are likely off the radar of the NSA or any other agency that works to "combat terrorism."

The only way that such people might be caught is if everyone's e-mail, twitter, facebook, or any other "e" account were scanned by some program that looks for certain key words that indicate that the particular individual may be up to something nefarious.

The key word in what I just said is "everyone's." Let's forget the practical aspects of such a task and consider for a moment just what that means. As I see it, it means absolutely no privacy for anyone in their electronic communications. It likely means that if someone were joking about something like this, they would be arrested and brought in for questioning (note this has already happened to a few ignorant fools posting "jokes" to social media), and since it would be well-known that this happens, anyone who is serious about performing a nefarious act would never communicate it to anyone in any manner where their plot could be discovered. It is likely, then, that such surveillance would be absolutely useless and only serve to create a world so paranoid that it would be hard to do anything at all nefarious or not.

I liken the situation to news reports of someone who, through no fault of their own, just happens get robbed or get shot anywhere in any place in the world. News media jumps on this like flies on you know what, and before we know it, we have everyone saying that the area where the incident happened is a place no one should be caught dead in even though the statistical probabilities of the same thing happening to anyone in that area are probably on the order of the statistical probabilities of getting bit by a great white shark. If you look up those statistics, around 10 people per year get bit by sharks of any kind which means that for any individual, there is what amounts to a 0.000000001 percent chance they will get bit by a shark. Yet I am sure there are still people out there who fear getting bit by a shark, and from a purely statistical viewpoint, such people should be considered insane as I see it.

As I see it, the problems that surveillance of everyone's e-communications would attempt to solve have much deeper roots, and such surveillance would not solve the problem. Personally, I would rather not live in a fear based world like that. It would, for all intents and purposes be Orwell's 1984 incarnate.

 

[BlueDrake]

Can we vote for TechSpot to block this account? I highly double the real Snowden would be using his real name and picture.

People just want to claim credit, we all know it's not really him on the site.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

The way I see it, the vast majority of these incidents were perpetrated by someone who has absolutely no association with a known terrorist group, and as such, are likely off the radar of the NSA or any other agency that works to "combat terrorism."

The only way that such people might be caught is if everyone's e-mail, twitter, facebook, or any other "e" account were scanned by some program that looks for certain key words that indicate that the particular individual may be up to something nefarious.

The key word in what I just said is "everyone's." Let's forget the practical aspects of such a task and consider for a moment just what that means. As I see it, it means absolutely no privacy for anyone in their electronic communications. It likely means that if someone were joking about something like this, they would be arrested and brought in for questioning (note this has already happened to a few ignorant fools posting "jokes" to social media), and since it would be well-known that this happens, anyone who is serious about performing a nefarious act would never communicate it to anyone in any manner where their plot could be discovered. It is likely, then, that such surveillance would be absolutely useless and only serve to create a world so paranoid that it would be hard to do anything at all nefarious or not.

I liken the situation to news reports of someone who, through no fault of their own, just happens get robbed or get shot anywhere in any place in the world. News media jumps on this like flies on you know what, and before we know it, we have everyone saying that the area where the incident happened is a place no one should be caught dead in even though the statistical probabilities of the same thing happening to anyone in that area are probably on the order of the statistical probabilities of getting bit by a great white shark. If you look up those statistics, around 10 people per year get bit by sharks of any kind which means that for any individual, there is what amounts to a 0.000000001 percent chance they will get bit by a shark. Yet I am sure there are still people out there who fear getting bit by a shark, and from a purely statistical viewpoint, such people should be considered insane as I see it.

As I see it, the problems that surveillance of everyone's e-communications would attempt to solve have much deeper roots, and such surveillance would not solve the problem. Personally, I would rather not live in a fear based world like that. It would, for all intents and purposes be Orwell's 1984 incarnate.

I see your point.. but there's one big difference between your example and the reason for fear. yes, people might be afraid of sharks even though getting attacked is unlikely, but it HAS happened. And that's the difference. Nothing has ever happened from the surveillance. No one was hurt, no one was threatened, and no one has ever been put in jail for their emails. In fact, we didn't even know our rights were being infringed on until Snowden told us.

Now, you could say, well, would it be ok for someone to steal money from you even if you didn't know it was happening? And I'd say, no, of course not, but if they were stealing so little money that I couldn't even find evidence of it, and that money was being used to just MAYBE help prevent a wacko from blowing up a bus stop, I wouldn't care. I'd be ok with it. I know I'm pretty much alone in that opinion, but I see terrorism as being a bigger threat to Americans than an NSA filtering program looking for communications to parts of the world many of us can't even find on a map.

 

[Snowden]

Thanks, me.

Can we vote for TechSpot to block this account? I highly double the real Snowden would be using his real name and picture.

I vote you learn what a pseudonym is.

Lolachu.

 

[mailpup]

I think we've had enough personal comments. Let's get back on topic shall we?

 

[Guest]

Nothing has ever happened from the surveillance.

As in "not a single crime has been prevented"? I concur.