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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the did-you-Yahoo? dept.

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.

12 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Harassing the security apparatus is pointless by HBI · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless by crashumbc · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless by HBI · · Score: 2

      Peggy Noonan had an article a couple weeks ago about one of her friends in Manhattan. The guy is pretty middle of the road, according to her, and has voted both ways in the past. He said something like "I'm going to go into that booth and vote for him and never admit it, like 40 million others".

      The polls this year lack veracity for that reason. I see what the USC/LAT people are doing, and it's interesting, but who knows whether that is real, either.

      --
      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    3. Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless by meta-monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    4. Re:Harassing the security apparatus is pointless by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Trump is a very bad choice for president, but locker room talk really is not why he should be avoided.

      Agreed. He should be avoided for the stupidity he showed in making those comments while wearing a microphone. And, let's head off the idea that he thought the microphone was off: what's the first rule about wearing a microphone? Assume that it is on and recording.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  2. Speaking of contradictions... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Speaking of contradictions... by RelaxedTension · · Score: 2

      I think it's pretty safe to say the employees that would have been involved with writing it would be under a serious gag order. The employees talking about this are clearly not those same employees, and had nothing to do with writing it.

      I would hope that they were at least smart enough to keep any changes like that in-house. Trusting code they give you, especially a kernel module, would be epic stupidity.

    2. Re:Speaking of contradictions... by sniper86 · · Score: 2

      Perhaps the alleged kernel module was built on top of the netfilter code, doing deep packet inspection via xt_string. Theoretically such a system could be constructed to add hidden match rules from an iptables list from userspace, much like past Linux malware has run tasks not listed on the process table.

    3. Re:Speaking of contradictions... by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      So were they handed a module and ordered to install it, or were they ordered to write custom code?

      There would have to be more involvement from Yahoo. Kernel modules have to be built against the correct kernel version. Upgrades to the kernel would have to be coordinated with the NSA/FBI/whoever to ensure that the upgrade did not remove the scanning module.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
  3. locker room talk? by MooseTick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

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    Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
    1. Re: locker room talk? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Informative

      I have heard and said things that lewd but I've never heard or said anything that rapey. Vulgar language is not the main problem here. Trump suggested that he got away with sexual assault, that's the main problem.

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      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re: locker room talk? by mr_mischief · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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?