It seems one American tech company isn't like the rest as far as resistance to the NSA's demand for mass data retrieval, ultimately losing a protracted court battle, and faced steep fines for not complying.
The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
In a blogpost, the company said the 1,500 pages of once-secret documents shine further light on Yahoo previously disclosed clashed with the NSA over access to its users’ data.
The papers outline Yahoo’s secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to resist the government’s demands for the tech firm to cooperate with the NSA’s controversial Prism surveillance program, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.
“The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government’s surveillance efforts,” said company general counsel Ron Bell in a Tumblr post.
The surveillance program was run in conjunction with the NSA’s British equivalent, GCHQ.
In the end, of course, the NSA won. But it is notable and perhaps even commendable that Yahoo was basically alone in this fight. While the other tech companies, including AOL, Apple, Google and Microsoft, apparently all handed over their data without a whimper.
US threatened Yahoo with $250,000 daily fine over NSA data refusal
The NSA was able to make those ubiquitous data requests after the U.S. government amended a key law in 2007. The law, Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act had limited the NSA's reach and the agency was stymied by Yahoo's objections, the tech company arguing that the data requests were both “unconstitutional and overbroad”. Ultimately, the FISA court provided the necessary legal authorities to the spy agency and the request was fulfilled after an appeal failed.
Apparently, Yahoo had been trying for years to get the court records released to no avail. What prompted their release now is unclear.
Federal judge William Bryson, presiding judge of the foreign intelligence surveillance court of review, which reviews denials of applications for electronic surveillance warrants, unsealed the documents on Thursday.
Disclosures in the Guardian and the Washington Post about the Prism program, which was discontinued in 2011, prompted an international backlash over allegations of overreach in government surveillance and against the tech companies which cooperated with it.
“Despite the declassification and release, portions of the documents remain sealed and classified to this day, unknown even to our team. The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government’s surveillance efforts. At one point, the US government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if we refused to comply,” wrote Bell.
“Our fight continues. We are still pushing for the FISC [Fisa court] to release materials from the 2007-2008 case in the lower court. The FISC indicated previously that it was waiting on the FISC-R ruling in relation to the 2008 appeal before moving forward. Now that the FISC-R [court of review] matter is resolved, we will work hard to make the materials from the FISC case public, as well.”
I just may dust off my 10-year old Yahoo email account.