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"Lawful Spying" Price Lists Leaked
ogaraf writes "Wired has a story about how the site Cryptome.org leaked the price lists for 'lawful spying' activities of Yahoo and other companies, and subsequently received a DMCA takedown notice from Yahoo. The documents, however, are still posted online, and in them you can learn, for instance, that IP logs last for one year, but the original IPs used to create accounts have been kept since 1999. The contents of your Yahoo account are bought for $30 to $40 by law enforcement agencies."
I like the part where Yahoo complains that the leaking of the document could "shock" its users and damage its reputation. Shoulda thought of that earlier, huh?
... I guess I expected a little more respect from a company I let throw advertisements at me all day and get rich off of it.
If they won't respect us, why should we respect them?
Everyone install Ad Block Plus and mail dog turds to these fools!
Time for paid services with explicit privacy protection. There is a good business case for this, I think, but will require thoughtful way to market to the masses. Any ideas?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
If you actually read the documents (I know, that's too hard), you'll see that this is a list of information Yahoo! can provide in compliance of subpoenas, search warrants and court orders.
Oooh, if the cops get a search warrant, they can look at your Yahoo! friends list. It's the end of liberty as we know it!
How can a document be both confidential and copyrighted?
"Lawyer claims intellectual property rights on method to suck and blow at same time."
If you read it, you'll see that it's basically an explanation of what information they do and do not have, how their various properties work and what information they store, and how much it will cost an agency to have certain information requests addressed. It doesn't represent some sort of sinister pipeline of information directly from their users' keyboards to the "evil government." If anything it's useful to everyone because it shows exactly what they do and don't save, and it might act as a deterrent for the casual or clueless investigator who watches too much CSI and thinks sending a request off will instantly pinpoint the bad guy by backtracking his DNS through the GPS IP address of his netbook's MAC module or whatever.
It's a good thing it's already been archived on WikiLeaks http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Yahoo_compliance_guide_for_law_enforcement%2C_23_Dec_2008
- Aetheral Research -
It's not that Yahoo occasionally complies with the authorities. It is that they have a pricing scheme for it. Maybe this is common practice, but it sounds like instead of fighting for the user, Yahoo is rolling over and perhaps even jumping at the opportunity to make a quick buck by selling out someone's confidential information.
End of liberty as we know it? No. Scary, when combined with the US government's increasingly arbitrary conditions for search warrants if you're a "terrorist"? Yes.
... or other confidential markings in this document, I don't feel there is any reason not to public disclose this document all or in part. In fact, I will do that just now...
For email:
"Yahoo! retains a user’s incoming mail as long as the user chooses to store such messages in their mail folders and
the user’s email account remains active. Yahoo! retains a user’s sent mail only if the user sets their email account
options to save sent mail and has not subsequently deleted specific messages."
For messenger:
"For Yahoo! Chat and all forms of Messenger, Yahoo! has log information regarding the use of the services. Yahoo!
maintains a “Friends List” for users of Yahoo! Messenger and can determine from its logs the time and date that a
user logged into Messenger or Chat (in the prior 45-60 days) and the IP address used. Yahoo! also can retrieve
from its Chat and Messenger logs the names of the chat rooms that the user accessed and the Yahoo! IDs of the
other people with whom a user communicated through Messenger during the prior 45-60 days. In order to search
these logs, a Yahoo! ID and a specific time frame, preferably no more than three days, must be provided."
For flickr:
"If provided with a Yahoo! ID, Flickr URL, or Flickr NSID, Yahoo! has the ability to produce subscriber information for
the account-holder. As long as the Flickr account is active, Yahoo! has the ability to produce content in the account
– with associated upload IP addresses and date and time – as well as the email and Groups information for the
account."
For groups:
"Yahoo! maintains information about Group moderators, as well as an activity log for each Group. The Group activity
log is a transactional log that indicates when members have subscribed or unsubscribed from the Group, posted or
deleted files or polls, or other similar events. Not all Group activities are logged, however. For example, the reading
of messages or downloading of files or photos is not logged.
Although the Group Message archive maintains messages sent to Group members, the message archive does not
contain any attachments to the messages. Yahoo! does not maintain those attachments in any form.
For current Groups, Yahoo! retains information relating to the moderator, members, and the active contents of the
Files, Photos, and Messages sections. If a Group has been deactivated or deleted, information about the Group
may be preserved for approximately 30 days, after which the information may be deleted."
For geocities and other premium web services:
"For web-hosting
and domains, Yahoo! will have basic Yahoo! registration information about the user who posted the page. Yahoo!
also will have the active files that the user has uploaded to the website, including the date on which the files were
uploaded, and the domain-based email that is available to the user. Deleted email is not available."
And here is how much it costs:
" Basic subscriber records: approx. $20 for the first ID, $10 per ID thereafter
Basic Group Information (including information about moderators): approx. $20 for a group with a
single moderator
Contents of subscriber accounts, including email: approx. $30-$40 per user
Contents of Groups: approx. $40 - $80 per group"
We the people is a law enforcement agency.
rewriting history since 2109
streisandeffect. Some people never learn.
and what makes you this /. does not collect data and market it to pay their own bills?
Luckily, the last time i used yahoo was in 1997
Yahoo,hummm, tried them early on, did not like, will not use yahoo anymore. I fact, I was asked to use facebook, don't like them either, am about to unload them, too. It is like "texting", a total distraction and unsafe for any driver. I think I will remain with html, e-mail, and my blog (which I have neglected to keep up). I have no use for all the toys of Microsoft. In fact, I have had problems with meta on xhtml as on Bluefish and have gone back to html 4.01 without meta at all, but do use CSS. Too much junk is a bane to we dinosaurs.
Retired dinosaur, simple user, volunteer, guinea pig
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091206112730AAYSucH
Aside from the numerous instances documented in older Slashdot stories, the EFF has a nice list http://www.eff.org/wp/unsafe-harbors-abusive-dmca-subpoenas-and-takedown-demands of examples where a corporation's lawyers sent DMCA takedown letters alleging infringement by content they later admitted they do not own.
At this point only a District Attorney would prima facie "be fairly confident [the subject of a DMCA takedown letter from Yahoo] is a Yahoo document."
Yahoo wrote in its objection letter that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”
It's hard to shame someone who doesn't already feel that they have something to be ashamed of. I guess we know Yahoo understands it's behavior to be shameful but continues to do it.
This is outrageous.
If someone leaked that the USPS was steaming open letters for the government for $40 or whatever people would be going ape-shit.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Right, and ooh, a subpoena is SO hard to issue! No judge need be involved; prosecutors get to write them themselves -- motivated, perhaps, by nothing more than a hunch.
There's a huge difference between a warrant and a subpoena.
$META_SIG_JOKE
The fuckers are making US pay for our own data.
Selling us back our own shit.
Our taxes pay the cops, they milk the cops in exchange for OUR data.
Somebody sue these fuckers already...
What it charges China and the EU? I am guessing that America is still getting screwed and paying top dollars for this, while both EU and China pay bottom prices. I mean, none of you really though that this was reserved JUST TO US GOV., Did you? It was Yahoo AND MS that sold information to the CHinese gov that put away one of their citizens. And yes, Yahoo and MS BOTH SELL to eu GOVs. Quietly, but they still do it.
If a copyright notice is optional, then some means to know whether the document is genuinely copyrighted PRIOR to its dissemination would be needed for others to know that it is in fact copyrighted. It could be that copyrighting the document was overlooked, and has only been corrected after the fact. If they did copyright it prior to dissemination, then there has to be at least something to show this.
Michael Gershberg appears to be claiming, if Cryptome's copy of the letter is accurate, that the document is in fact copyrighted. So how is it that he knows this to be the case? Does he see some instrumental proof that the document is copyrighted? Was he just personally told that the document is copyrighted? He should support his claim by providing a notarized copy of the instrumental proof, or swear out a claim citing who told him that it was copyrighted, in order to be convincing. Otherwise, he is not very convincing at all.
The lack of a copyright notice always gives the APPEARANCE of not being copyrighted. How can anyone know otherwise unless there is some alternative proof. WHERE'S THE PROOF?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The law is available here. It's a requirement for law enforcement requesting information, not the organizations providing it (except that the amount is "mutually agreed by the governmental entity and the person or entity providing the information").
So, the guide is a means for law enforcement to interact with Yahoo (and the law) in a standard, easier way. Does it make it more likely that investigators would ask Yahoo for documents if Yahoo makes it easy, as opposed to cooperating as little as possible? Probably. But Yahoo has no reason not to cooperate.
And what does Cryptome charge to take down a document?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I think everyone here is very much missing the point: They are providing these pieces of information in response to lawful orders like subpoenas. They do not have the ability to say no to those, it is illegal and they would get in trouble. So why the price sheet? Because the law does not require that third parties spend money to cooperate with the police. You can bill them for the costs incurred. Hence, for large companies that get requests all the time, having a price sheet makes sense. That way there's not any debate about it. They say "Ok you want us to do X, it is going to cost you $Y."
I fail to see the big deal here. If Yahoo was offering to sell private information on the open market, ya that would be a problem, and would get them sued. They aren't. They are complying with discovery orders that they have no choice to, and charging for it as they are allowed to.
Yes... two centuries of a stable government has provided among the highest standards of living and opportunity, but you'd rather throw that away for a government that gets bloodily overthrown every few years such as the paradises that are Afghanistan... and Somalia... and Haiti.....
You, sir, are a complete moron who has no idea how nice you have it and how bad unstable governments really are.
The
If I copyright all my emails shouldn't I get a taste when the spooks read my email?
most people use Dynamic IPs, so they can subpoena the IPs but they will get a lot of "false positives" to track down the owner of those Yahoo IDs. Most people do not have the same ISP they had in 1999 due to the great dial-up to broadband rush after the Dotcom bubble burst. You'll have grandmothers and teenagers be accused of stuff that some random stranger that shared a dynamic IP address with them did.
Thanks to the Patriot Act, the police, NSA, FBI etc can get the information without a search warrant. The Democrats lead by Obama had promised to remove the Patriot Act as soon as they took office, but why it is still a law, I'll never know. But then many of them voted to pass it when Bush was President anyway. Both the Democrats and Republicans are corrupt in that way.
By the way Yahoo uses web beacons to track web site usage and most users don't know how to opt out of that. I've opted out of it several times already.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
While watching a presentation by a Google engineering exec a few months ago, I got the impression that selling information about Google users was at the core of Google's strategic vision. Maybe I was extrapolating too far from limited data. I'm cautiously favorable about Google as a company, and "don't be evil" is just the mindset that's needed for a company that has that much power. But nearly every institution, cultlike, has the denial of its worst evil built into its expressed ideology. Microsoft is all about innovation, authoritarian governments all call themselves "democratic republics", etc. Google seems to have the potential to go either way.
Yes I realize that the main discussion is about Yahoo, but I think Google is more important, since they're a better company.
From Wikipedia:
"Economist Robert B. Reich, in his 1991 book The Work of Nations, stated that in the United States, the number of private security guards and officers was comparable to the number of publicly paid police officers. He used this phenomenon as an example of the general withdrawal of the affluent from existing communities where governments provide public services.
Instead, the wealthy pay to provide their own premium services, through voluntary, exclusive associations. As taxpayer resistance has limited government budgets, and as the demand for secure homes in gated communities has grown, these trends have continued in the 1990s and 2000s.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the trend in the US is one of a quiet transformation of the role of security guards into first responders in case of a terrorist attack or major disaster. This has resulted in longer guard instruction hours, extra training in Terrorism tactics and increased laws governing private security companies in some states."
Notice, Reich's assertion about private and public security forces was from 1991.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Google is conspicuously absent from the list of companies. I wonder what their price list is like.
Not that you have to, but why not make the tyrants job that much harder and more expensive.
After (they) spend thousands (millions?) gaining access (if possible) to the data, what if all the had was perfectly innocuous (useless) crap?
Let the paranoid bastards waste their time and money chasing shadows!
"Freedom has the advantage of being the cheapest form of government" --Desmond Tutu.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
So, if there's a law that requires ISPs and the like of turning over data to government on request, is there also a law that prevents such service providers of informing a user that some of their personal information has been released and to whom?
I was hoping to find the Comcast document since they are the ones providing my phone service.
You can delete your Yahoo! account here:
https://edit.yahoo.com/config/delete_user
I did.
Nice. On Sprint, make sure you have a password set for your voicemail and you can get tipped out that you are being tapped.
In order to access stored voicemail, the subscriber’s password must be reset/changed by Sprint. When the password is changed, the subscriber will not be able to access his/her voicemail and this procedure is not transparent to the subscriber.
It appears to be an intractable, maybe fatal flaw in our system.
That's because you see it as a system, rather than choice, what we choose to do, what we collectively decide society should be. All power is lost at that moment we accept that as truth, and people become passive victims of the sharks that know how to exploit any system.
It's not sustainable for the longer term though. Either your country goes bankrupt, or faces similar fates in the hand of the criminal lyers that have held you in chains for so long, and you again realize you can choose. Or you decide to start believing in change and support those who have integrity and wish the best for the nation (ie. a true president with the best intentions, rather than just corporate and religious-fundamental interests).
Well put post btw. But things are not that hopeless as you put it!
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
to violate my privacy that way. I'd have guessed a few cents, or 100 for a dollar.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Mirror here.
(This text is just random oxdung to fool the stupidness filter on /.).
Obviously gmail is probably exactly the same in terms of being willing to give over all data.
Is there any free email provider who is known to not turn over your details so quickly?
That's why DMCA's are so dangerous. You absolutely do not have to register a document for it to become copyrighted. All the registering affects is certain formal functions related to procedures and damages.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
What Yahoo is complaining about is the inavsion of it's privacy, but they can't call it that. The last thing they want is customers pointing out they should be ashamed of thier hypocracy.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
By design is Evil!
Even the President of the United States of American pisses on the Constitution of the United States of America becasue the President "by design" thinks that he is above all laws, local laws, states laws, federal laws, Constitutional Laws, and any and all laws of other countries of the Earth.
Hay, Obama can order his Secret Service to kidnap any 2-year old child (he perfers male children for this) anywhere on Earth, for him to sodamize as he wishes.
And, Constitution, Obama pisses on the "Constitution."
Its his perogative.
Issuing an invalid DMCA takedown notice for publishing a document that's clearly intended for pursuing copyright violators. They're just as bad as the people they're selling this information to.
Sprint's policy (per Sprint-Spy.pdf) seems to be:
If 2 agencies are involved in requesting a Court Order, bill both of them.
I hope someone's checking to insure that both DON'T pay ONE bill... :-/
I started downloading all of those files, as well as a few others.
About 10 minutes after midnight, my connection goes dead. I switch on the wireless and hopscotch via the neighborhood, and my service is all paid up, no glitches, no problems. And nobody else-hence the connection via the neighborhood-is having any problems.
Huh.
Let's see if I get a knock on the door sometime tonight.
Since alienating your userbase isn't enough, after the memos leak and the inflammatory discussions start, make sure to send some 11th hour DMCA requests to widely read net personalities. You wouldn't want your real customers, by which I mean advertisers, to think that the people steering the ship actually understand the dynamics of the Internet.
nothing can bring them back. maybe only getting totally sold to google can establish trust in them from now on. horrible.
Read radical news here
we, the internet people, do NOT like being told off, leave aside such things. lets put the fucking document on every p2p platform so that it will go around forever. and upload it to every goddamn user generated content site.
fucktards. to think that they seemed to be compliant with the rising net culture of freedom and progress some time before ....
Read radical news here
what the FUCK is wrong if someone lives with their parents ? are you aware that in other parts of the world, children are EXPECTED to live with their parents when they grow old and take care of them ? it may be to the contrary in your socially challenged america, but however this is the way it is in majority of the world.
and, isnt it possible that he could be making his (or her) living through non corporate, freelance means, just like me, who is typing these lines ?
let me tell you one thing - before shitting generalizations about people you dont know, you need to broaden your horizon. for, it is apparently lacking A LOT.
Read radical news here
As in the goverment paying email providers to read peoples email thats not right and if it was right i should be giving the same right. And for yahoo you stink as a email provider i wouldnt think any better of you to hand peoples emails over for a low price, and i will say this people who do online crime more and likely doesnt use yahoo because yahoo stinks so much because even they have morals,unbelivable right. I want to see the results and how much money the goverment is spending to do something they shouldnt be doing unless a person got charged with a internet crime. Now a Pedo go read there emails noone cares,that goes even if they make Pedo remarks in a chatroom please read there email i beg you do something about them. Or if you see some idiot in a chatroom i can give you a name to look for he's on Ares P2P and goes by the name Lethal, he gets a kick out of talking big and harrassing people,by calling there home phone that is easy to get specially if they had a website and used the domain godaddy,they give that information for free and will help you get even more information the reason i know godaddy somone msn him from godaddy and godaddy does use msn in a form to communicate with you when you set up a website, well they did with my brother, so this same msn name pms me and ask this person name so and so has called us to get access to the account. then suddenly my brother msn's me did you do that im like no, they said they want your phone number im like i dont want them to have my phone number,then i thought this out and explain to my brother who could of done this hes like owe i said i want you to give them a number im gonna see how loyal godaddy is because i will hear of it for sure, i gave my neibors phone number and i knew he would stay on the phone with the idiot it he got the number from godaddy, to find out godaddy isnt loyal they gave him the phone number and hes like this person calls me and keep telling me i was some name i wasnt and keep on and on, i know my neibor he will argue till he dies, then he said this person hung up. then 10 minutes later he calls and starts making threats ill kill your children your wife etc etc,this was when you could use skype to call landlines for free btw, thats what he used, heres the priceless part he keep calling over and over but one time he thought my neibor would hung up he wouldnt say nothing hes like you there you there and this person named Lethal had him a party chat going on evidentally he had others on there who thought this was funny. I explained to neibor he was probably using skype and had several people on i said get me some info, i said to stop talking and dont say a word let him talk so he did exactly as i said and if he is stupid as i know he is he will think you hung up or forget your there and they will talk and be careless what they say,thats exactly what he did, funny to say the least, if i wanted to i could screw his life up bad but he's a kid and i feel sorry for him, thanks for his screwup i now know his address and everything. he said should i let the authorities know then i told him why he called and i gave godaddy your phone number etc etc. I knew he wasnt gonna harm you but he likes to make threats to do so, of the dozens of people he has done this to that i know of, why he gets a kick out of it i dont know but you should hear the shit he says. The first time he called was funny to the neibor do you remember when anyone could spoof a caller id online,he did this he acted like the fbi say to least comical and the crime that he was getting raided for was not possible for neibor because you would have to have a computer to do that, the crime was hacking priceless in its own meaning even he didnt know how to do that. so my neibor says so if you must come on this should be entertaining. then Lethal aka this kid ask are you scared, hes like scared for what and btw i left the door open for you and neibor made this comment boy my tax dollars are well spent,he also said especially getting raided and to beat it all for hacking i dont even own a compute
And without registration its pretty hard to prove who owns what without a huge expensive fight.
We are also in a copyright black hole where the future has been extended out to infinity to prevent entropy from dissolving Hollywood or at least that' how the MPAA describes its constitutional duty for repaying its debit for a "limited monopoly".
you can disengage ONLY if you dont have people to care for, and you do not risk starving/humiliation yourself. otherwise, you are pretty well fixed wherever you are, unless you are a modern day aristocrat. you say fuck off to microsofts comcasts at&ts warner bros of the world, but they still rule the world. whats the difference ?
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