Yahoo Wants To Know If FBI Ordered Yahoo To Scan Emails (onthewire.io)

Reader Trailrunner7 writes: In an odd twist to an already odd story, Yahoo officials have asked the Director of National Intelligence to confirm whether the federal government ordered the company to scan users' emails for specific terms last year and if so, to declassify the order. The letter is the result of news reports earlier this month that detailed an order that the FBI allegedly served on Yahoo in 2015 in an apparent effort to find messages with a specific set of terms. The stories allege that Yahoo complied with the order and installed custom software to accomplish the task. Yahoo officials said at the time the Reuters story came out that there is no such scanning system on its network, but did not say that the scanning software never existed on the network at all. "Yahoo was mentioned specifically in these reports and we find ourselves unable to respond in detail. Your office, however, is well positioned to clarify this matter of public interest. Accordingly, we urge your office to consider the following actions to provide clarity on the matter: (i) confirm whether an order, as described in these media reports, was issued; (ii) declassify in whole or in part such order, if it exists; and (iii) make a sufficiently detailed public and contextual comment to clarify the alleged facts and circumstances," the letter says.

Comments

P.S.

[93 Escort Wagon]

"And, while you're at it, could you tell Marissa where she left her car keys? She's been searching for days without any luck. "

Re:P.S.

[Big Hairy Ian]

Have I replied to this thread?

What a brave new world

[Anonymous Coward]

All of this shit with secret judges signing secret warrants in secret courts, sending National Security Letters with gag orders attached, to the point where confidence in American business is being continually undermined and no one is even allowed to speak about it HAS GOT TO FUCKING STOP.

Re: What a brave new world

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm voting for the power hungry narcissist who honestly doesn't give a rats ass about us little people.

Re: What a brave new world

[FatdogHaiku]

I'm voting for the power hungry narcissist who honestly doesn't give a rats ass about us little people.

Look, you CAN'T vote for all of them... you have to pick one for each office.
I personally like the power hungry narcissist with the least amount of recent asshattery at the moment, who ever that is...

Re:What a brave new world

[Anonymous Coward]

The knee jerk condemnations and whiny hysteria HAS GOT TO FUCKING STOP. NSL's or their equivalent have existed in one form or another since the founding of the country. FISA warrants were instituted during the Carter administration. Acting like these items are some kind of secret weapon trampling on citizen rights is shallow thinking. Could these items be misused? Of course. Just like any other law. Has there been any evidence these items are actually harming a US citizen? I am talking about specific evidence not what screeds about what might happen. Do people even realize that any evidence collected under a FISA warrant cannot be used to prosecute some one in court? FISA warrants are granted when the potential crime being investigated poses a threat to national security. And complaints about the NSA collecting data on foreign citizens needs to include the fact that it was the European intelligence agencies who collected the data on their own people and shared that data with the NSA. And those agencies collected data on their citizens in secret. At least the American agencies attempt to go through a legal process that is really not that damn secret.

People ignore the simple fact that the US does have enemies and there are legitimate national security concerns that someone needs to address. The US is under attack everyday by foreign intelligence agencies trying to compromise the military, political, commerce, and targeted individuals or groups for one reason or another. Attacking only the US intelligence agencies while ignoring all the other foreign players in the intelligence game is foolish.

And as far as I am concerned I don't give a shit about what any foreigner wants or wishes. Until people wake up from their one dimensional thinking you can expect things to get worse. I am glad the US military is the strongest in the world because it will be needed in the not so distant future when anarchy with malice explodes around the world. There will be a WW3 the only question is whether or not it stays conventional or goes nuclear. Either way little effort will be made to avoid collateral damage and non-combatants. Russia's current carpet bombing of congested cities is just a minor preview of the violence to come. The best that can be said about this future is that it will certainly be entertaining.

Re:What a brave new world

[flyingfsck]

Nothing new actually. Refer to Der Process of Franz Kafka at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I actually have a Praha Franz Kafka T-shirt - it looks very nice.

Re: What a brave new world

[sjbe]

I personally like the power hungry narcissist with the least amount of recent asshattery at the moment, who ever that is...

So you definitely aren't voting for Trump. He's clearly the most worst but picking a least worst remains problematic even taking him off the table...

Irony

[Jester998]

So Yahoo, a company that made its name as a search engine, can't search through its own corporate records.

Now we know why Yahoo is no longer relevant to anyone.

Re: Irony

[Anonymous Coward]

They obviously know, but are legally forbidden from commenting.

Re: Irony

[nomadic]

Yes, this. That was phrased very carefully.

Guessing the real story here

[surfdaddy]

If I were Yahoo, and my reputation was damaged from this, and I had received a government FISA order that I couldn't talk about, then I would do exactly this same thing. I see this as similar to a canary - Yahoo can't divulge what the government ordered, so instead, *publicly*, ask the FBA if "a, b, c" happened and to provide details. But I'd make sure I'd word "a, b, c" as what I actually know DID happen. So in fact I've hinted to the world the actual true story without actually providing the information that I'm not legally allowed to make public.

AND they know the truth is better than the spin

[raymorris]

It sure sounds to me like they are prohibited from talking about, so to get any information out they have to ask the FBI to do so.

ALSO this suggests they WANT information released. They could just say "we can't discuss that article". Instead, they are trying to get a copy of the order published. That strongly suggests that they believe once people see what's actually in the order, it'll be better than the speculation. Further, they calculate it'll be better *even though it'll renew interest, creating another round of news stories*.

Other things Yahoo wants to know

[JoeyRox]

* Why didn't we accept Microsoft's $45B offer in 2008
* Whose erection lead to the hiring of Marissa Mayer?
* What will we do when Verizon cancels its acquisition agreement?

Re:Other things Yahoo wants to know

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, casual sexism is hilarious.

Marissa Mayer may be a terrible CEO but I don't recall anyone asking who's cock Daryl McBride sucked to get his job and he was a damn sight worse.

Several possibilities

[PPH]

It's possible that the FBI served some middle managers with the NSL and forbade them from informing their superiors. Happens all the time with investigations. When I worked for Boeing, they were absolutely paranoid about employees being 'turned' by the feds to rat out unethical/illegal company practices. They had a corporate policy requiring any contact by gov't officials to be reported to management. But if the FBI letter says 'tell no one', the consequences could be a jail term vs just getting fired.

It's also possible that a fake NSL was served by agents working for some foreign security service posing as FBI*. A couple of fake badges and guns and I doubt many data center admins would question the order, let alone check on it's validity.

*Or actual FBI moonlighting for someone else. Everyone thinks Snowden was an anomaly. He was in that he went to the press with what he had. The revolving door between private company security and gov't TLAs is pretty busy. Its not unknown for some official to do a little 'research' for a future employer.

Be a dick

[fulldecent]

If it were me, I would be a fucking dick about it.

Dear FBI, we may or may not be allow to discuss a letter we may or may not have received from you. Could you please confirm whether or not you have sent us a letter after November 2 2014 and before November 4 2014 where the first sentence of the letter was "Dear Yahoo, we are writing to you to demand your"?

Dear FBI, we may or may not be allow to discuss a letter we may or may not have received from you. Could you please confirm whether or not you have sent us a letter after November 2 2014 and before November 4 2014 where the second sentence of the letter was "complete cooperation on maters of national security"? ...

And all of these letters would be sent from the Yahoo Japan office.

The long term solution is to ensure that matters of security require, by design, cooperation of multiple corporate executives in different jurisdictions. Oh you want to compel me to sign a custom operating system that breaks into one iPhone? No problem, I will cooperate, and as soon as you get our other executive in Russia to cooperate then the binary will be signed.