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Yahoo Secretly Scanned Customer Emails For US Intelligence (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares with us an exclusive report from Reuters: Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events. Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. 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, who did not want to be identified. Reuters was unable to determine what data Yahoo may have handed over, if any, and if intelligence officials had approached other email providers besides Yahoo with this kind of request. The two former employees say that the decision Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made to obey the directive resulted in the June 2015 departure of CISO Alex Stamos, who left to work for Facebook. The company said in response to Reuters questions about the demand, "Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States."
...was there anybody left who didn't know that?
Obama had the most transparent administration in history. If you don't agree, you will be subject to double enhanced surveillance.
...the only department of the US Government that actually listens to you.
Oh, wait...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
THEY DIDN'T FIND ANY!
"....Nobody here but yahoo customers...."
If they were a law-abiding company, they would DENY requests for warrantless wiretaps.
Instead they're in the business of trading political favors.
...part is that according to Stamos, the scan code was so poorly written that "Due to a programming flaw, he told them hackers could have accessed the stored emails." Also imagine that the CEO did not warn his top security guy after receiving the order. Also imagine that not only Yahoo was targeted.
What's different here is that the messages are being scanned in real time, rather than scanning a database of saved messages. Maybe this explains why Yahoo Mail is so damn slow.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
I have a Yahoo! mail account, which was my main contact account for things like my bank, credit cards and so on. After 2 cases of password breaks, I've now migrated away from that and sent them all to gmail, which I was using for something else.
Looks like once the remaining people on it leave, there won't be even a subscriber base to make Yahoo! even worth acquiring.
That's correct. When the baby boomers are retired, retirees outnumbers workers, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare in 2030, taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
I can't wait for the Democrats to take over and end this nonsense just like they promised.
I'll bet a whole dollar that Microsoft, Google and Apple have been secretly doing this for ages too.
Yahoo already did this 10 years ago for Chinese government, remember Shi Tao?
She ignored employees who wanted to continue the company practice of working from home, executives who wanted to take the site in a different direction, and shareholders who wanted her to be competent in her job and actually increase shareholder value in ways other than just ridding her inheritance of the Alibaba position.
That's correct. When the baby boomers are retired, retirees outnumbers workers, and two-thirds of the federal budget goes to Social Security and Medicare in 2030, taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
We could always set up public health care like any other reasonable country and take the health care corporations' extortion out of the equation. Nah.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Look at the bright side. The millennials don't have jobs either, and still live in mommys' basements. The only jobs are that of H1Bs here, and outsourced jobs. So the entire federal budget will have to be paid by the Chinas and Indias of the world. That will end offshoring pretty fast - they themselves won't want it!
That's one possible outcome, to be sure - won't work, of course, since we've never managed to collect more that 20% of GDP as federal taxes for very long. Far more likely IMO is that we'll just print the money to pay the seniors, while continuing to lie about inflation where it maters for inflation-adjusted payouts. Naturally, a future where we spend less isn't to be taken seriously - those barrels will be full of pork come what may!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That is a request that is so obviously unconstitutional.
But, perhaps, we should consider why Yahoo acquiesced. Perhaps when the NSA was wiretapping those connections between datacenters, they discovered something that could be used to blackmail Yahoo, or its CEO, or both.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't know if you're attempting humor here, but that is something particularly sought after. Email which doesn't get sent from an inbox that is connected to by remotely varied IP's is something they are aware of.
Cop:
And why are you receiving phone calls from J. Edgar Hoover?
Wadsworth:
J. Edgar Hoover?
Cop:
That's right. The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Colonel Mustard:
Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?
Wadsworth:
I don't know. He's on everyone else's, why shouldn't he be on mine?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I can understand that. Who needs is more than them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nope. But that was to be expected. I mean, seriously, they were looking for intelligence in people using Yahoo mail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're too busy fighting microaggressions to care about the big ones.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because everyone wants the government to swallow 1/8th of the economy, and then make all of our healthcare become just as efficient and safe as the VA Medical system!
You're comparing apples and oranges. Extending Medicare for everyone is the public option. The problem with the VA system is that the country went to war without allocating resources for all the damaged bodies that got chewed up and spit out on the battlefield.
AT&T had cut a plum deal with Yahoo to provide e-mail services for the telecom giant way back in the early 2000's, which is still in effect to this day.
Chew that over and get back with me.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
No joke. Choose your source. It happened.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08...
or google "trump security briefing nuclear"
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Polluting the discussion with extra lies is not good for the future of humanity.
That's right, Trump is polluting it with enough lies for everyone.
is that the problem??? or is the problem the government , as usual
why is it everytime the president doesnt get what he wants, the people in the most need suffer. (with government shutdowns)
I dont want them in charge of whether or not i can go see a doctor
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Extending Medicare for everyone is the public option.
...because that would never be abused... just like college tuition never shot into the stratosphere after Uncle Sugar began guaranteeing student loans to world+dog... right? Oh, wait... it did. (yes, I know facilities currently refuse Medicare, but only because there's less paperwork and hassle per dollar to be gained by dealing only with private insurers.)
Incidentally, if you actually know someone on Medicare (not Medicaid mind, but Medicare), you'd know that it doesn't cover a whole lot, necessitating a lovely little thing called Part D Coverage... which is exclusively handled by private insurers. Are we ditching that as well? If so, healthcare is about to get real ugly... and far more expensive than anyone could ever have planned for in their finances.
The problem with the VA system is that the country went to war without allocating resources for all the damaged bodies that got chewed up and spit out on the battlefield.
Indeed - and it's that horrifying lack of even the most basic foresight that makes me doubly worried about having the government run everyone's healthcare.
Seriously - the ACA was supposed to cut costs, make things less expensive (it didn't), allow you to keep your current insurance (it didn't), and provide a more diverse insurance market (again, it didn't.) So, what makes you think the government won't bung-up single-payer as well?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Okay, I listed this before and I'll do it again, because...this is important. There are alternatives to yahoo, MS and Google and we need to hold the to a higher standard. Checkout these web mail alternatives
;-) )
there are others listed in this article:
https://www.vmail.me/en/
https://countermail.com/
http://www.neomailbox.com/
http://www.e-mail-made-in-germ...
/
http://techpp.com/2013/08/28/n...
(not encrypted but smaller country + company appeals to me
http://techpp.com/2013/08/28/n...
we need to use alternatives to show there are choices and to make companies aware they need to work in OUR best interests if they want us to use them.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Medicare is not as good as you think it is. I know several people on Medicare who have been denied access to procedures because of their age. The "death panels" are real. Well, they're not deciding life and death yet, but they are getting close when they deny seniors the care they need to lead a pain-free life. Oh, and Medicare is NOT free. They pay every month for it.
Back before the ACA was passed everybody was complaining about insurance companies denying claims. What was funny was that Medicare was denying more claims than any insurance company ever dreamed was possible.
This is precisely why I host my own email, web, ftp, and name servers. I don't trust the integrity, or lack of for the matter, of any of the free services. This just reinforces the fact that my mistrust is not incorrect. It is not terribly difficult to do and you can find howtos. I even have a backup mail exchange and name servers.
No joke. Choose your source. It happened.
Your first reference quotes Joe Scarborough making the claim, without substantiation, in the course of interviewing former CIA Director Michael Hayden (who is NOT the source). That takes the libel (and maybe the felony) out of your mouth and puts both into his.
The second, and as many of its links as I've followed (I don't promise to have followed them ALL, but I tried to follow each that seemed appropriate), doesn't mention the "asked three times in his first security briefing" claim. They try to spin the remarks he DID make into "he's clueless and will drop the bomb". But the actual quotes just seem to show that he's a competent high-level negotiator who understands the "Mutual Assured Destruction" doctrine of the cold war.
In case you're not familiar with it, it's a variant on the game of "chicken". It's built on making potential attackers believe that, if they attack us (or our allies) with nukes (or other suitable "weapons of mass destruction" such as biological or chemical weapons), we might just nuke them into slag regardless of any "fallout" - literal or otherwise - to ourselves or the rest of life on earth.
The trick to "The MAD Doctrine" is that the leaders of the maybe-retaliating power have to LOOK just crazy enough that they MIGHT do it, or the threat doesn't work.
Republican Party political figures have tended to play that game well, achieving success in international relations, though it costs them dearly in elections. Democratic figures tend to play it poorly, going for the election win and screwing up the credible threat and international relations. Then they get pushed progressively farther until they eventually strike out, but with "measured" and "proportionate response", which gets us into ever-escalating wars (and gives the opponents no opportunity to capitulate). This is part of why Democrats have historically started wars and Republican ended them.
Little as I like Republican Party politicians, this is a subject where they have (at least pre-Neocon) had a lot more on the ball than their major competition.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
As far as free market medical care goes, if one has money to pay out of pocket for a medical procedure they can always get it. In countries with single payer medical care systems there are always private alternatives if one can afford to pay. While I am not a fan of Obamacare I don't see why people feel justified in complaining about it when healthcare prices are dictated by the free market they want to revert back to. Healthcare prices have always been skyrocketing even before Obamacare, the baby boomers just didn't notice it because they didn't need those services until today.
Regardless of a single payer or free market health care system in America the state and federal healthcare regulators need to require healthcare providers to publicly publish current health service prices and outcomes. Why is it when I visit a healthcare facility I always have to sign a waiver saying I am liable for paying for any service the provider deems necessary at whatever price the provider dictates? That is like going into a retail store and the sales associate fills your shopping cart up with whatever unpriced merchandise they think you want and then mail you a bill a few weeks later. It is absurd. I think price and outcome transparency would go a long way to drive down prices.
Also getting rid of for-profit health insurance companies would be a tremendous consumer savings. I have been covered by all the name brand health insurance companies over the years and they provide nothing of value beyond central planing/price fixing with providers. They provide no guidance on cost savings, don't want offend a provider, and I get dozens of bills from all the providers sent directly to me to figure out what was done and if it was necessary. They skim their profits off the top and then make up for it by denying claims or raising prices. The more money that goes directly to the providers the better.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
http://motherboard.vice.com/re... (June 21, 2016 ) :)
The "login records" get tracked
"Surveillance and Security Lessons From the Petraeus Scandal" (Nov 13, 2012)
https://www.aclu.org/blog/surv...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
is that the problem??? or is the problem the government , as usual
Alternate view: Most regulations enacted by government are to rectify bad behavior in business - FCC, FTC, HIPAA, SOX, etc.,... They are the bad tasting but necessary medicine to fight the actual illness.
why is it everytime the president doesnt get what he wants, the people in the most need suffer. (with government shutdowns)
The President doesn't shut down the government. Rather, Congress refuses to vote to find it which results in a shutdown. Congress refuses funding when they don't get what they want not when the President doesn't get what the President wants. Who again is taking the ball and going home when they don't get their way?
Think about the USPS - Congress voted to make it fund its pensions so far into the future that it can't really compete with UPS or FedEx. Is the USPS at fault when they are legally bound to failure due to laws Congress imposes?
I dont want them in charge of whether or not i can go see a doctor
I don't either. Which doctor and whether you can go are not the issue with single payer - only the source of payment.
..and it's a law that no act of congress can supersede.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The yahoo lawyer is Ron Bell. He signed off on this loathsome activity. http://legaltalknetwork.com/po...
Seriously - the ACA was supposed to cut costs, make things less expensive (it didn't), allow you to keep your current insurance (it didn't), and provide a more diverse insurance market (again, it didn't.) So, what makes you think the government won't bung-up single-payer as well?
True, true and true. Now ask yourself:
1.) Why were costs so high to begin with?
2.) Why were people not allowed to keep their current insurance and/or doctor to begin with?
3.) Why does the insurance market have such little diversity to begin with?
The ACA in its current form is a failed attempt to fix existing problems - it wasn't the cause of these existing problems.
Usually, by "customer" we mean the people who pay for something.
AFAIK the Yahoo e-mail service is free, so its users aren't customers.
Yahoo customers are advertisers, or people who make transactions on its e-commerce platform. And Yahoo don't control their e-mails unless they are also using Yahoo mail. So Yahoo cannot really monitor their incoming messages.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Did they find any?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
trivial to fund those, right now only the first $118,500 of income is taxable for Social Security. Raise that limit and the problem goes away, and it only affects the upper middle class and upper class.
Problem solved. There is no real problem.
Even better is that it would stop Americans from coming up here, pretending to be Canadian to get medical coverage (as simple as using someones CARE card in BC and without one you pay the same as the government) so we could actually afford to treat taxpayers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Why would anyone (besides the doctor) be in charge of whether you can see a doctor? Or can Americans force doctors to see them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
From now on, sensitive writings from me will be on paper and encoded with Enigma with a codebook unique to me and the recipient.
I bet they forgot how to work Enigma out, since it seems they've spent the last 20 years slurping our email.
I'm only half joking.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
What a load of crap. VA medical has been in the shitter for decades, and the government has done next to nothing to fix it.
And yes, I'm a vet.
Just another day in Paradise
Let me pile on here. My company (a Fortune 500 member) used to offer up to a half dozen different healthcare plans through several providers. As of this year, we were down to one with two plans, one a "Cadillac". For next year, we no longer have any options...just a single plan (not the Cadillac), and my doctor won't accept that one. Oh, and prices have continued to rise much faster than inflation every single year. So, tell me again why I should be happy with the ACA? We wanted to insure all of the uninsured?...okay fine, but stop screwing with everyone's existing coverage, jackasses.
Just another day in Paradise
The ACA in its current form is a failed attempt to fix existing problems - it wasn't the cause of these existing problems.
It "fixed" problems by creating new, or worsening existing problems. There's no competition for providers, no more Cadillac plans (just lost mine), and skyrocketing costs. This can't continue because it's unsustainable.
Just another day in Paradise
Yeah, because the Canadian system is so wonderful.
My deceased aunt, an Ontario resident, got her free healthcare, but had to wait, and wait for services she needed for a brain tumor. You know, those services saved her money that she can't spend anymore. She could have gotten it addressed quickly here in the U.S., though at a price.
Just another day in Paradise
I'd be willing to bet they were paid for their services. If so, that would be only reason other major email providers haven't done this yet. They're haven't been as desperate for revenue like Yahoo. It's very likely there will come a time when they will be. That's one of those facets of this problem not getting enough attention. Everyone's much more "trustworthy" when they're stable financially, even corporations. Can you still continue to trust them with your valuable personal data when their luck begins to run out?
Are there any gopher servers left?
Also do any modern browsers support the gopher protocol anymore?
Yes those are somewhat serious questions as it has been ages since I accessed a gopher server, probably since the mid to late 90s and the last time I did was probably when I was at the University of Minnesota.
Time to offend someone
Why would anyone (besides the doctor) be in charge of whether you can see a doctor?
I had a health insurance provider that told me that a local clinic was in network — except none of the doctors at the clinic were in network. Every time I went to the clinic, I got a big bill because the insurance provider determined that I went outside the network. That kind of nonsense was routine before Obamacare.
My company (a Fortune 500 member) used to offer up to a half dozen different healthcare plans through several providers. As of this year, we were down to one with two plans, one a "Cadillac". For next year, we no longer have any options...just a single plan (not the Cadillac), and my doctor won't accept that one.
Strange. The small company I worked for used to have a single health plan that would cost me $500 per month. Now we have a half-dozen health plans and I'm paying $150 per month for better coverage. I think your Fortune 500 company is screwing you over to make a political statement about ObamaCare.
Is this news to anyone? If you are willing use a "free email" that mines your mail for "value" (marketing, etc.) to be sold off are you really surprised when they are using the same platform to get paid by the govt. to search that same data? If you don't physically control the server and manage the software then you don't control the data stored there. Period, this is why you manage your own data. You can ask secretary Clinton about the privacy benefits of a directly owned and managed email server.
The bottom line is that no one cares as much about your privacy/data as you do. To these companies your data is a resource to exploit. Shit, we used to have "personnel" departments at work, now we have "human resources", which by the way is very appropriate - they want to strip mine everything of value then discard the husk, we are a resource... just like coal or iron ore.
Lucky you. My plan (through United Healthcare), covering the family, is very close to $5k/year, along with co-pays and deductibles that have jumped every year. I think the Cadillac plans are being eliminated due to the changes going into affect over the next couple years. Here's an article on that.
http://kff.org/health-costs/is...
Just another day in Paradise
Why do you despise America?
Literally every other developed nation has universal health care. There's differences in how they do this, but they do, and they pay much less money (last I looked, German care was the most expensive, at about two-thirds of what US health care costs per capita), and often get significantly better results. Why do you reject the idea that the US can do something as well as other governments?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Diminishing health care plans and rapidly rising health care costs have been with us for years, ACA or no ACA. It sounds to me like your employer was cutting benefits costs, and may have been using the ACA as an excuse. Never trust a Fortune 500 company to be honest about why it's doing things.
Which prices have been going up far faster than inflation? What you pay for your plan? That could be skyrocketing while health care costs went up moderately if that's just what the plan costs minus what your employer pays.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
No competition for insurance providers? In Minnesota, there's several companies offering policies through MNSure. I don't know why it's not working for you; did your state set up an exchange? I've got a very good plan myself, with no particular effort on my part. Health care costs were skyrocketing before. From where I sit, the ACA has been a considerable improvement, and lots more people have some sort of access to health care.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
She still could have had it addressed here in the US, at a price. US health care doesn't refuse foreigners who can pay.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
if the government is in charge of payment, and there is a government shutdown. who is going to lose first, us or congress/the president?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same