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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.
"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. "
#DeleteChrome
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.
They obviously know, but are legally forbidden from commenting.
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.
* 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?
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch