"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."

Comments

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[lawpoop]

How would you know that a supposed National Security letter you got was real?

Re:Tempest in a tea cup

[dkleinsc]

The really interesting part about National Security Letters is that they're fairly obviously unconsitutional, but were designed in such a way that the judiciary would never rule on their constitutionality. By making it a crime to reveal that you've received an NSL, you make it impossible for anyone to demonstrate that it existed in the first place, and thus prevent anyone who was targeted by them to establish standing to sue. So if someone tries to challenge it, the executive branch can argue correctly "You can't prove an NSL existed, therefor you can't prove you were harmed by NSLs, therefor you have no reason to sue".

I just wish more of the Senate had understood what was really at stake and followed Sen Russ Feingold's (D-WI) lead. Because what was actually going on was that the executive succeeded in shutting out the judiciary from the judicial process.