Yahoo 'secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government'

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 6, 2016 at 5:39:03 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Yahoo 'secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government'
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Yahoo 'secretly monitored emails on behalf of the US government'
> Company complied with a classified directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of 
> NSA or FBI, say former employees
> By Nicky Woolf in San Francisco and agencies
> Oct 5 2016
> <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/04/yahoo-secret-email-program-nsa-fbi>
>
> Yahoo last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific 
> information at the request of US intelligence officials, according to a report.
>
> The company complied with a classified US government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts 
> at the behest of the National Security Agency (NSA) or FBI, two former employees and a third person who knew about 
> the program told Reuters.
>
> Some surveillance experts said this represents the first known case of a US internet company agreeing to a spy 
> agency’s demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small 
> number of accounts in real time.
>
> It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a 
> set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources.
>
> Reuters was unable to determine what data Yahoo may have handed over, if any, and whether intelligence officials had 
> approached other email providers besides Yahoo with this kind of request.
>
> According to the two former employees, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s decision to obey the directive troubled some senior 
> executives and led to the June 2015 departure of the chief information security officer, Alex Stamos, who now heads 
> security at Facebook.
>
> “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States,” the company said in a brief 
> statement in response to Reuters questions about the demand. Yahoo declined any further comment.
>
> Andrew Crocker, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the use of the word “directive” to 
> describe the program indicated that the request may have been ordered under the section 702 of the 2008 Fisa 
> Amendments Act, which allows the government to target non-US citizens abroad for surveillance.
>
> Revelations by Edward Snowden about the Prism and Upstream programs – of which the Yahoo program looks like a hybrid, 
> Crocker said – show that US citizens were also subject to mass surveillance.
>
> “The fourth amendment and attendant privacy concerns are quite staggering,” Crocker said. “It sounds like they are 
> scanning all emails, even inside the US … the fourth amendment protects that fully. It’s hard to see how the 
> government justifies requiring Yahoo to search emails like that; there is no warrant that could possibly justify 
> scanning all emails.”
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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