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Yahoo Offers Non-Denial Denial of Bombshell Spy Report (theintercept.com)
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Yahoo 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. When The Intercept reached out to Yahoo for an official comment and explanation, the company offered a non-denial response after 20 hours since Reuters's report, a report said. (If a report is inaccurate, the company says so explicitly. Non-denial is something you give when you are caught off guard and things reported are true.) From the report: From Yahoo's PR firm, "The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems." This is an extremely carefully worded statement, arriving roughly 20 hours after the Reuters story first broke. That's a long time to craft 29 words. It's unclear as well why Yahoo wouldn't have put this statement out on Tuesday, rather than responding, cryptically, that they are "a law abiding company, [that] complies with the laws of the United States." But this day-after denial isn't even really a denial: The statement says only that the article is misleading, not false. It denies only that such an email scanning program "does not" exist -- perhaps it did exist at some point between its reported inception in 2015 and today. It also pins quite a bit on the word "described" -- perhaps the Reuters report was overall accurate, but missed a few details. And it would mean a lot more for this denial to come straight from the keyboard of a named executive at Yahoo -- perhaps Ron Bell, the company's general counsel -- rather than a "strategic communications firm."Reuters reported that Yahoo's decision has prompted questions in Europe whether EU citizens' data had been compromised, and this could result in derailing a new trans-Atlantic data sharing deal.
They should just take that miserable shit-heel of a company out back and put it out of its misery. What a joke. Take a bow Marissa, well done girlfriend.
I think the more weaselly part of the statement is that they system does not exist "on our systems." So it could exist, but maybe it's on a computer technically owner by the US government.
Her legacy of declining revenue, disgruntled employees, negative ROI, executive departures, strategic blunders, and oh, designer short-skirts.
If they were subject to an NSL they wouldn't really be able to talk about it no?
It's much easier to say "You caught us red handed and now we gotta weasel out by shoveling manure on it 'til you get dizzy".
See? It is actually THAT easy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not to mention the "our systems" part...whose does it exist on that provides the same access?
Mayhaps this is how Yahoo allowed practically all the accounts info to get hacked...
Is anyone surprised? Nope, not a bit. Except maybe by the fact that it took so many hours to get a PR firm to put together a few weasel-words and slimy phrases. I'd have thought they already had lots of in-house expertise in that area, by way of spinning the bad news they've repeatedly delivered to their shareholders.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
>> "The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems"
Translation:
Its actually running on a box that is physically located in our server farm and hardwired right into our backbone, but the NSA owns the hardware.
If this isn't an illegal search I don't know what is.
I bet even the USPS steams envelops when it can for the NSA.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Just that it's not running on Yahoo's infrastructure.
It could very well be that all yahoo email is being copied to an external system where it's processed.
That would let yahoo get away with saying "does not exist on our systems".
So basically they wrote a function to search for certain words. A text search.
This is not news, we've known for awhile now that the Feds can search our email.
The fact that they wrote "a custom software program" is not some new revelation. It's always software that searches.
While we're on this topic, let's remember that in Snowden's info was released in 2006:
Thank you Dave Raggett
All of this crap is because of idiot politicians pedaling fear in the form of "Terrorists!".
This is how tyranny triumphs. Fear.
"Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate.. to suffering" - Yoda
If you are voting for Either Clinton or Trump, you're most likely voting based on Fear.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You missed part of the statement. it states in part "scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems"
Which could mean - a scanning system does exist - but as described does not.
While Yahoo is on the coals right now we'd be foolish to assume that the other major tech companies providing emails are not doing something similar. I find it hard to believe that Yahoo is working with the feds on the down low and nobody else is. I have no evidence of it but it would be truly shocking if Yahoo was alone in this behavior.
We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure
translation: we give them exactly what they ask for, so if they ask for everything, we give it to them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I wouldn't mind being a failure for a $219 million dollar retirement.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Citizen 4 already showed us that through PRISM Yahoo, M$, Apple, Facebook and others had already been bribed to allow back doors and expose their clients data.
I am sure that this is the case.
We do love our scapegoats though....
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
This press release could have been crafted by somebody working for either Clinton, or one of the Clintons themselves.
Uh, no. I'm reasonably certain that: A) There is no need to steam envelopes because advanced scanning technologies (millimeter, x-ray, variants on MRI) can read the contents of a folded letter without the need for steam. B) The NSA, when collecting Foreign Intelligence, is well within its remit to steam any envelope it needs to that it has legal authorization for. C) They don't steam everything - scanners can't be that fast yet. D) The USPS isn't doing the steaming, that would be NSA Agents working hand in hand with sworn USPS Postal Inspectors (i.e. the USPS' federal law enforcement arm,) at the postal facilities. E) All of that was known decades ago, so... F) Any legitimate foreign power would never entrust classified information to the mail system, it would be secure digital transmissions or diplomatic bag for anything that sensitive. (Yes, Virginia, diplomatic bags exist still.)
Any more dumbassery?
The denial says it does not exist on their systems. It does not deny that the software exists or even that it is actually running, just that it is running on the systems they own.
It is an entirely accurate statement if their systems forward all emails to NSA owned systems in or directly connected to their network.
nm
But I bought the security envelopes! You can hold them up to a lamp and everything!
"The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems."
The article improperly described the mail scanning system. Because of this incorrect description, the article is not talking about the mail scanning software that exists on Yahoo's system.
Note that Yahoo did not simply state: "A mail scanning program does not exist on our systems."
Yahoo probably spent the first 18 of those hours trying to figure out who/what is The Intercept.
oh wait, that's Google.
At yahoo, it's the second thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No way. Obama assured the world back in 2013, NSA does not spy on ordinary citizens either:
And he never told a lie...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yahoo does have to give information in response to warrants, which probably includes a tool to search for emails pertaining to a specific topic/person/etc.. Like I don't want to hand over all the mails for an account, just the ones relevant to the case. Doing that will probably requires a "mail scanning tool", just like other search tools.
By the same token Bing is a "internet scanning system" the NSA uses to extract data.
This so-called "secret search tool" is nothing that difficult to implement.
Back after the BellSouth/SBC merger, I was part of a group of SBC employees that did day-to-day administration and maintenance of Yahoo mail.
Yeah! at&t was running yahoo mail!!! No freaking shiznit the US Government was up to it's smiling happy ears in yahoo mail! D'uh!!!
The mailbox search tool I recall was essentially just a grep on maildrop files for keywords or regular expressions.
Making that available to the feds rather than process tons of paperwork on lawful intercept... sounds like something at&t would do.
the "tool" that allowed lookups to find out what user had an IP at X time was just grep against radius logs.
These "secret tools" aren't fancy and they for dang sure aren't all that secret.
Now that Werizon Vireless is aquiring Yahoo, plus the recent customer records dump... there's gonna be hell to pay! ... IM ... search. You name it!!!
but either way, the US government will have carte' blanche access to Yahoo... mail
Or, given the delay in issuing this non-denial, it could mean that it existed yesterday but not today.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The mail scanning described in the article did not have sexual relations with that woman.
You missed part of the statement. it states in part "scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems"
Which could mean - a scanning system does exist - but as described does not.
Most... all?... free email providers have an email scanning system of some kind that profiles you for advertising purposes.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/15/gmail-scans-all-emails-new-google-terms-clarify
They ALL have a scanning system that filters spam.
This is just conjecture... but what if they left out a sentence intentionally?
"The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems."
meant:
"The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems. *COUGH* *COUGH* It DOES however run on systems provided by the NSA."
Everyone is semi-required to proactively scan for child porn, or, in any case, several large companies do it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/08/05/the-tech-war-on-child-porn/
Possibly Yahoo!'s competitors denials are just as weasel-worded.
*yawn* Troll on, ANONYMOUS COWARD. You bring political bullshit in here but don't stand behind it, or have ANYTHING to back it up? How very Trump of you. (BTW, Trump has become more than just a name, and is now a descriptor associated with any use of weak, baseless, and usually entirely inappropriate insinuations.)
Somebody needs to fire Marissa Mayer, Adam Cahan and Laurie Mann. Why these clowns continue to run the company is beyond me. Hell, Donald Trump can run Yahoo better.