U.s. Authorities Threatened Yahoo With Fines Over Firm's Anti-secrecy Combativeness

[shart_attack]

As in, combativeness in not being willing to comply with a secretive U.S. surveillance program.

AFP wire service—US authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveillance program requiring it to hand over user data in the name of national security, court documents showed Thursday.

The documents, made public in a rare unsealing by a secretive court panel, "underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts," Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post.

The documents shed new light on the PRISM program revealed in leaked files from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The program allowed US intelligence services to sweep up massive amounts of data from major Internet firms including Yahoo and Google.

Bell said 1,500 pages of documents were ordered released by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the case dating from 2007. He said that in 2007, the government "amended a key law to demand user information from online services."

"We refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the US government's authority," he said.

Yahoo's court challenge failed and it was forced to hand over the data. The court records were kept sealed.

"At one point, the US government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if we refused to comply," Bell said.

Since the Snowden leaks, Yahoo and others have been seeking to make public these court documents to show they were forced to comply with government requests and made numerous attempts to fight these efforts.

The opening of these court dockers to the public "is extremely rare," Bell said, adding that the company was in the process of making the 1,500 pages publicly available online.

"We consider this an important win for transparency, and hope that these records help promote informed discussion about the relationship between privacy, due process, and intelligence gathering," Bell added.

But he said that "despite the declassification and release, portions of the documents remain sealed and classified to this day, unknown even to our team."

US threatened Yahoo with huge fine over surveillance

 

[Rikurzhen]

It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they refused, accumulated the fines, ran them up to $10 million, paid the fines and gave in and them had to report paying the fines in their SEC financial filings and report the fines in conference calls with analysts. They have a duty to report their financial state. This now puts them into a bind - they can't reveal the reason for the fines and they also can't engage in tricky accounting to hide the fines. Take that issue to court. Meanwhile, their silence on the nature of the fines would drive investors and the financial press crazy and they'd know what was up by the simple act of Yahoo declaring that they're not permitted by law and secrecy order to discuss what led to the fines.

 

[Jarlaxle]

They need to incorporate offshore, and tell the US government to stick it up their ass!