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Yahoo email surveillance linked to court order, Apple denies any similar requests

Yahoo's tool to scan the contents of customer emails came as a result of a U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order last year, and was created by adapting otherwise benign software, a report indicated on Thursday.

Government officials were hunting down a "signature" linked to the communications of a state-sponsored terrorist organization, sources told the New York Times. To meet demands, Yahoo adapted a system normally meant to catch spam, malware, and child pornography, enabling it to find messages with the signature for sharing with the FBI.

That collection is no longer ongoing, two of the sources said. Scanning traffic was allegedly necessary because while the terrorists were thought to be using a unique identifier, investigators didn't know which email accounts were associated.

Yahoo has denied the existence of the scanning tool, claiming that the technology described in a Reuters article "does not exist on our systems."

An Apple spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that it has "never received a request of this type," and that even if it had, it would fight it in court. A Microsoft representative insisted the company has never performed a similar scan, while a Google spokesperson said the firm hasn't received this kind of request and would refuse.

The truth of the matter may be difficult to discern. Requests like the one Yahoo reportedly received often come with a gag order, preventing people from disclosing that a search took place. Yahoo and other companies like Apple and Facebook have denied providing "direct access" to their servers for the National Security Agency's PRISM mass surveillance program, or even being aware of PRISM, but were known to have had their data harvested — willingly or otherwise.



10 Comments

volcan 10 Years · 1799 comments

Why would the government only make the request to Yahoo? Makes no sense since Yahoo is sort of a marginalized email service these days anyway. I believe Apple would definitely fight such an order and probably in a very public manner such as with the recent iPhone unlocking issue. Seems there is likely more to the story than has been revealed so far.

cali 10 Years · 3494 comments

volcan said:
Why would the government only make the request to Yahoo? Makes no sense since Yahoo is sort of a marginalized email service these days anyway. I believe Apple would definitely fight such an order and probably in a very public manner such as with the recent iPhone unlocking issue. Seems there is likely more to the story than has been revealed so far.

Like Gmail info being handed over but Google being quiet?

gatorguy 13 Years · 24627 comments

cali said:
volcan said:
Why would the government only make the request to Yahoo? Makes no sense since Yahoo is sort of a marginalized email service these days anyway. I believe Apple would definitely fight such an order and probably in a very public manner such as with the recent iPhone unlocking issue. Seems there is likely more to the story than has been revealed so far.
Like Gmail info being handed over but Google being quiet?

Wasn't Google one of if not the first big tech to publicly report on government requests for user information? This year may be the 10th they've published their Transparency Report? Many of their tech brethren have only somewhat recently decided to follow suit and some still don't. 

volcan 10 Years · 1799 comments

gatorguy said:
Wasn't Google one of if not the first big tech to report on government requests for user information? 

Doesn't matter. If there is a gag order they wouldn't be able to report it anyway. I remember years ago a friend of mine who worked in a big data center told me confidentially that they were required to host special software from the FBI that remotely installed a keystroke logging app. It was universally implemented at all peering data centers in the US but there was a gag order so very little is known about it. I think they called it Magic Lantern. I believe it has been discontinued now due to the freedom of information act.

sockrolid 14 Years · 2789 comments

Yahoo's tool to scan the contents of customer emails came as a result of a U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order last year, and was created by adapting otherwise benign software, a report indicated on Thursday.

FBI: "Hey.  Yahoo.  We need you to scan all of your users' emails.  For security and stuff."

Yahoo: "No prob.  We already scan the f--- out of our users' emails.  For ads and stuff."