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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.
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.
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.
The sad part is, Yahoo used to be good. They had cool cooking shows, a fantastic sports section, and the email was actually one of the best available. Almost all of that is gone, taken away by this cost-cutting CEO who trashed what was left of the company.
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.
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