Back in 2015, Yahoo reportedly secretly created a custom software program to search everyone’s incoming emails for specific data provided by US intelligence officials. According to the reports, Yahoo complied with a classified US government directive and scanned millions of Yahoo Mail accounts for the NSA or FBI.
Apparently, this is the first known case of a US tech firm agreeing to a spy agency’s demand by searching all letters, instead of examining stored letters or scanning a small number of accounts. So far, the sources haven’t revealed what exact information intelligence officials were looking for. The only thing is known that they wanted the tech giant to search for a set of characters – maybe a phrase in an email or an attachment. It is also unknown what data the company may have handed over, if any, and whether other email providers have also been approached.
According to reports, the Yahoo CEO’s decision to obey the directive troubled some senior executives and forced the chief information security officer to leave. The latter now holds the top security job at Facebook. As for Yahoo itself, the company just announced that it complied with the laws of the United States and declined any further comment.
At the same time, the language used to describe the program may provide an insight into the law the government was operating under: some signs point to section 702 of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which enables the government to target non-residents abroad for surveillance. Moreover, Snowden’s revelations about similar Prism and Upstream programs showed that American citizens were also subject to mass surveillance.
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Date: Wednesday, October 5th, 2016
Apparently, this is the first known case of a US tech firm agreeing to a spy agency’s demand by searching all letters, instead of examining stored letters or scanning a small number of accounts. So far, the sources haven’t revealed what exact information intelligence officials were looking for. The only thing is known that they wanted the tech giant to search for a set of characters – maybe a phrase in an email or an attachment. It is also unknown what data the company may have handed over, if any, and whether other email providers have also been approached.
According to reports, the Yahoo CEO’s decision to obey the directive troubled some senior executives and forced the chief information security officer to leave. The latter now holds the top security job at Facebook. As for Yahoo itself, the company just announced that it complied with the laws of the United States and declined any further comment.
At the same time, the language used to describe the program may provide an insight into the law the government was operating under: some signs point to section 702 of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, which enables the government to target non-residents abroad for surveillance. Moreover, Snowden’s revelations about similar Prism and Upstream programs showed that American citizens were also subject to mass surveillance.
Posted by:
SaM
Date: Wednesday, October 5th, 2016
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