US Internet Company Refused To Participate In NSA Surveillance, Documents Reveal (zdnet.com)

Zack Whittaker reports via ZDNet: A U.S. company refused to comply with a top-secret order that compelled it to facilitate government surveillance, according to newly declassified documents. According to the document, the unnamed company's refusal to participate in the surveillance program was tied to an apparent expansion of the foreign surveillance law, details of which were redacted by the government prior to its release, as it likely remains classified. It's thought to be only the second instance of an American company refusing to comply with a government surveillance order. The first was Yahoo in 2008. It was threatened with hefty daily fines if it didn't hand over customer data to the National Security Agency. The law is widely known in national security circles as forming the legal basis authorizing the so-called PRISM surveillance program, which reportedly taps data from nine tech titans including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and others. It also permits "upstream" collection from the internet fiber backbones of the internet. Any guesses as to which company it may be? The company was not named in the 2014-dated document, but it's thought to be an internet provider or a tech company.

Comments

refused to participate

[fustakrakich]

That would be a neat trick... Can we 'refuse' too?

limited possibilities

[muphin]

There are only a few large companies out there that could refuse and make it more difficult for the government.
Giving the history with Apple refusing the decrypt data I would go with them, NSA probably wanted to tap into the iMessaging service.

Re:limited possibilities

[davide marney]

Sounds like maybe Cox Internet. They don't take kindly to their customers being abused. For example, they had refused to buckle under to Rightscorp, the copyright shakedown firm, and blocked their notices for years. As Cox explained in their suit (which they lost):

"Rightscorp and Plaintiffs tried to abuse Cox’s system," Cox told the judge. "Rightscorp sells shady services to copyright holders. It shakes down ISP customers for money without regard to actual liability, and it tries to enlist ISPs in its scheme. Cox explained it would not accept Rightscorp’s wrongful notices and asked Rightscorp to fix its notices. Rightscorp refused, instead dumping thousands of notices per day on Cox. As a result, Cox blocked Rightscorp’s notices. This suit is Rightscorp’s retribution, with Plaintiffs’ complicity, for Cox’s refusal to participate in Rightscorp’s scheme."

I bet it was Qwest

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably Qwest. That was covered extensively here back in the day. Their CEO was jailed for "insider trading" because the government didn't pay its contracts as leverage and it tanked the company.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest

Seconded

[ArchieBunker]

Just going to say Qwest. If you don't play ball with Uncle Sam then business suddenly becomes more difficult.