As Contradictions Mount, Experts Call For Declassification of Yahoo's Email-Scanning Order (onthewire.io)

An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: Look at this contradiction in the government's story about their secret scans on hundreds of millions of Yahoo emails. "Intelligence officials told Reuters that all Yahoo had to do was modify existing systems for stopping child pornography from being sent through its email or filtering spam messages." But three former Yahoo employee have now said that actually the court-ordered search "was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel -- in other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating system, far below where mail sorting was handled... They said that made it hard to detect and also made it hard to figure out what the program was doing."
Slashdot reader Trailrunner7 writes: Now, experts at the EFF and Sen. Ron Wyden say that the order served on Yahoo should be made public according to the text of a law passed last year. The USA Freedom Act is meant to declassify certain kinds of government orders, and the EFF says the Yahoo order fits neatly into the terms of the law. "If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning -- it's hard to imagine a better candidate for declassification and disclosure under Section 402," Aaron Mackey of the EFF said.

Comments

Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[HBI]

Working within the system will have no result. The only significant disclosures will come from someone throwing their life away ala Snowden.

The Yahoo thing doesn't grab the general public by the pussy, so they don't care.

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, feminists even argue for more rules, more censorship and criminalizing more things, rather than working towards a more tolerant and free society. They want to introduce starecrime and wantcrime, where simply the act of wanting a woman and looking at her is equal to rape. Welcome to the orwell society!

Trump is a very bad choice for president, but locker room talk really is not why he should be avoided. The only positive thing from this is that many republicans condemn his actions and declare to not support him anymore, so his chances of becoming president sink.

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[HBI]

Do you really believe all of this fake angst about Trump's statements? Or are they desperate for the good old days to come back when they didn't have to deal with a tea party or Trumpkins? Maybe they think they can separate themselves from the perceived electoral disaster coming?

Or, perhaps, there are a lot of people who will behave differently inside a voting booth than outside of it?

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[crashumbc]

Or, perhaps, there are a lot of people who will behave differently inside a voting booth than outside of it?

For all the people claiming "he can't win", there is a extremely large population of Americans that long for 1950's and will vote that way, no matter what they say in the polls.

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[meta-monkey]

The only positive thing from this is that many republicans condemn his actions and declare to not support him anymore, so his chances of becoming president sink.

Have you people not got the message yet that the voters have completely rejected the neocon GOP establishment? No one cares what Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and the rest of those quisling faggots have to say.

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[HBI]

At this point, any change is better than the status quo. Just waiting for the bottom to fall out of the economy again or another foreign war started by that harridan neocon warmonger...no.

Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless

[swillden]

Trump isn't going to get rid of representative elections in the next 4-8 years, if that's what you mean.

No, I'm thinking mostly of the damage he can do as command in chief, and as our chief diplomat.

Clinton...who knows. I actually don't have 100% confidence that that wouldn't be the result of her election.

There's no way a president could do that, short of declaring martial law, and I think Trump is far more likely to do that than Clinton. In either case, I don't think it would stand if they did.

Speaking of contradictions...

[93 Escort Wagon]

The summary presents one itself.

But three former Yahoo employee have now said that actually the court-ordered search "was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel -- in other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating system, far below where mail sorting was handled... They said that made it hard to detect and also made it hard to figure out what the program was doing."

versus

If the reports about the Yahoo order are accurate -- including requiring the company to custom build new software to accomplish the scanning ...

Surely if the Yahoo employees custom-built the kernel module, they wouldn't have found it "hard to figure out what the program was doing". So were they handed a module and ordered to install it, or were they ordered to write custom code? If the first submission is accurate, the second submission is irrelevant - and vice-versa.

locker room talk?

[MooseTick]

I've heard "locker room talk", and it was nowhere near as crude as what he was saying. I've never heard any guy casually talking/bragging about forcing themselves on women.

Re: locker room talk?

[mr_mischief]

There's a big difference between a guy saying "I want pussy" or saying "take Pam out for a cheap dinner and she'll give you all the head you want" and saying what Trump said. The offensive part isn't that he said the word "pussy". The offense is that he said he can just walk up to a random woman and touch her in the groin without asking and that he'll get away with it because he's important. So do you really want to make him one of the most important people in the world, when he's already proud of being able to get away with sexual assault?