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Yahoo Receives Special Recognition For Fighting For User Data Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation awarded Yahoo a gold star for its diligence in fighting for user privacy in courts. From the release: 'In 2007, Yahoo received an order to produce user data under the Protect America Act (the predecessor statute to the FISA Amendments Act, the law on which the NSA’s recently disclosed Prism program relies). Instead of blindly accepting the government’s constitutionally questionable order, Yahoo fought back. The company challenged the legality of the order in the FISC, the secret surveillance court that grants government applications for surveillance. And when the order was upheld by the FISC, Yahoo didn’t stop fighting: it appealed the decision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, a three-judge appellate court established to review decisions of the FISC. ... Yahoo went to bat for its users – not because it had to, and not because of a possible PR benefit – but because it was the right move for its users and the company. It’s precisely this type of fight – a secret fight for user privacy – that should serve as the gold standard for companies, and such a fight must be commended. While Yahoo still has a way to go in the other Who Has Your Back categories (and they remain the last major email carrier not using HTTPS encryption by default), Yahoo leads the pack in fighting for its users under seal and in secret.'"
Although they did end up losing, and were forbidden from even mentioning the existence of the case until recently.
They will risk jail and disregard all gag orders as a clear violation of free speech rights. I'm not impressed with show trials while secret deals are made in the back room.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But putting up a good fight matters! When the Zombies came looking for their users' brains, they at least boarded the doors and windows and load the shotguns and screamed Yahoo!!!!!
I can see, why this sort of procedure — including the gag-order — may be justified in some cases. But it is so easy to abuse, I'm not sure, the benefits we are getting are worth the risk we are taking.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is just like Kafkas "Der Prozess".
You got secret laws that people/companies are ordered by a secret court to be followed, and they are not even allowed to tell anybody about it.
Land of the free.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Is this the same Yahoo! that turned over data to the Chinese, which resulted in a bunch of people going to prison?
http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/08/technology/yahoo_china_b20/
Seems like a convenient PR stunt to me.
Yes, the good fight. How about they put up a good fight and fix their auth cookie vulnerabilities that lead to infected ads stealing user credentials and sending spam as authenticated Yahoo users? That's been going on for quite a while and still happens daily.
The brains of the Yahoo board aren't enough to be appetizers for zombies.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/cases/china-shi-tao
"
Shi Tao was sentenced in April 2005 to 10 years’ imprisonment and two years’ subsequent deprivation of his political rights. According to the court verdict, part of the evidence for the case was account holder information supplied by Yahoo!. Spokespersons for Yahoo! claimed the company was simply following local laws.
"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/28/yahoo_seeks_dismissal_human_rights_lawsuit/
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Yahoo! has asked a US court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of "aiding and abetting" acts of torture and other human rights abuses against Chinese dissidents. The company handed over information about its users to the Chinese government, which led to the arrests of the dissidents.
"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/yahoo-helps-china-jail-dissidents-says-rights-group
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Human Rights in China, a New York-based group, said Thursday that Wang Xiaoning was sentenced to 10 years in prison in Sept 2003 for "incitement to subvert state power" after Yahoo provided authorities with his email address.
"
and call me a tinfoil hatter all you want, but I do think this and the Snowden-crash issues are related-
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3929983&cid=44170993
The real cost of these BS authoritarian programs, as far as dollar figures go: First, we all get to fund these despicable agencies via our tax dollars. If that's not bad enough, then the drag on the economy manifested through situations such as the one described in TFS.
Everybody loses.
Not even taking into account the corrosive effects of these programs on our freedoms and rights.
In the end, they're a huge internet company that gives all our stuff up to the spooks. "Going to bat" would be doing what Snowden did - INFORMING us. They had years to do that.
What fight?
Going to a secret court where you WILL lose, then appealing to another secret court, where you WILL lose? How heroic.
It's one thing to work hand-in-glove with them like Microsoft and the telecom companies do, but being praised for going through a pointless exercise is a bit much.
It's like building a datacenter 100m closer to a hydro-electric dam than your competitor and claiming you only use green energy because of it's proximity.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
It is when said court is *secret*, the laws used by the court are *secret*, the verdicts reached by the courts are *secret*, and the punishments and actions encted by that court are *secret*.
To better understand, let's use an argumentum ad absurdium:
The secret court decided that anyone who wears blue, of any shade, is a terror suspect, because of intelligence that cells of terrorists are identifying each other based on wearing blue clothing. They keep this pronouncement in the strictest of confidences, lest the terrorists find out, and switch to earing pink.
Blue jeans are absurdly popular as casual wear in the USA. As such, "wearing blue" makes basically everyone into a terror suspect. Due dilligence requires the intelligene agencies, and secret intelligence courts to investigate and authorize said investigation, of basically everyone. False positives happen. It's life.
Robert Anyman, who lives at 421 maple street, gets unceremoniously arrested, by a secret court order, issued by the secret court, by secret police. He is prevented from exercising his right to counsel of his choosing, because the law he is being charged under is secret, and ordinary lawyers are not alowed to know such laws even exist, let alone what they say!
In the end, since nobody is allowed to check and impose oversight on this secret legal system, that legal system, and its enforcers, can do anything and arrest anyone they want, for any reason. They don't have to explain their actions, under grounds of national security.
That is why this is a very bad thing, and you should not buy into the sob story they are spinning about catching terrorists.
If Mayer really wanted to skate to where the puck is going, she'd make a massive push to retool Yahoo into a privacy-centric company.
Move as much of Yahoo out of the USA as possible so they can speak to their users freely. Very publicly and loudly proclaim that they will not play ball with government spy agencies, and back it up with real and demonstrable steps toward that end. Encrypt everything. Set up their services to make it cryptographically impossible for them to turn over plaintext to anyone. Keep the absolute minimum logs required by law. Don't collect any information that isn't absolutely necessary. Alert everyone to all government requests for data whenever possible, and give every user a status in their account which says, "Your information has NOT been requested by a government or intelligence agency" which disappears when this statement is no longer true. Provide a deadman's switch to automatically delete data according to some user-defined criteria. Open their infrastructure to community audits from trusted security experts. Have bug bounties for security flaws. Do all this and more. These are all legal and many could be implemented immediately.
Done sincerely, this could earn them respect, users, customers, and profits. They'd keep their old users of course (if they're still with Yahoo nothing is going to get them to budge) but they'd be set up to grow into a huge new sector. Privacy is going to be big in the coming years, and the technology exists to nearly completely, and legally, nullify most of the efforts of the surveillance state. They could steal all of the users who are wary of Google and Microsoft but don't see any decent alternatives. The companies which set themselves in this direction now are going to be the leaders that everyone else is chasing in 5-10 years. Kim Dotcom's Mega was arguably the first, putting privacy as the number one priority in their mission statement. Yahoo has the resources to be a big player in the this space.
What else can they do to save a dying brand? What better way to really set themselves apart? So much of what the NSA et al do is predicated on the complacency and collusion of private enterprise. Yahoo could stand head and shoulders above the rest by saying no when they come asking. Sorry, come back with a warrant. Got a warrant? OK, here's your encrypted pseudo-random noise--and its in dead-tree format. We are still at the point where government needs private business to cooperate. Business still has a choice in a lot of this. They can still choose to be on the side of privacy and liberty, and they could be greatly rewarded for it.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Yeah. Let's all just give up right now. Especially if nobody is going to know about it. Nice attitude there.
which is totally what she said