{"id":3275,"date":"2016-10-13T13:44:43","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T20:44:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=3275"},"modified":"2021-08-02T06:19:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T13:19:34","slug":"remember-yahoo-helped-us-government-spy-users-years-cant-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/remember-yahoo-helped-us-government-spy-users-years-cant-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Remember: Yahoo helped the US government spy on users for years, and they can’t be the only ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo spied on users, even American citizens, at the behest of the United States government. As everyone hopefully already knows, according to Reuters sources, a NSA (and\/or FBI) backed surveillance<\/a> program was implemented at Yahoo that actively searched the content of every email passing through its servers. That means everything you sent to or received from a Yahoo email has been screened at least once by this point. Sources claim that an already-implemented child pornography screening program was adapted to screen for keywords related to terrorism and national security.<\/p>\n

Yahoo has been helping the government spy on email users for years<\/h2>\n

In the past, Yahoo has been found to do some very shady things in as many loopholes as possible at the behest of the US government. In one instance<\/a>, a drug conviction was upheld after it was revealed that when a user deletes an email from Yahoo\u2026 Yahoo doesn\u2019t actually delete all the copies of that email: A copy is still kept by the company, despite a cleverly worded privacy policy that seems to say contrary, for law enforcement archiving and searching purposes. Now (years ago really), they have leveled up from searching old records of messages to peeping at your communications in real-time.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t really\u00a0denying it<\/h2>\n

Articles about the Yahoo incident, which also appeared (ironically) on news portals<\/a>, states that:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, choosing to use the word misleading instead of incorrect means that there was some truth to the story, and the statement seems like all but admission that such mail scanning as \u201cdescribed in the article\u201d did exist on their systems at some point.<\/p>\n

According to press, there are further revelations coming out from internal sources at Yahoo which reveal that CEO Marissa Meyer had hidden this massive spying project from key people. Former security head at Yahoo left, in part due to this spying scandal, and is now working at Facebook. The truth of this horrendous privacy scandal has yet to fully come to light, but calls for more information have been growing ever loud.<\/p>\n

The EFF<\/a> has called for Yahoo to make public the gagged court order that lead to all this. Senator Wyden has also joined that call. Considering that Yahoo made history earlier this year by releasing two national security letters<\/a> to the public once the federal gag order had expired, you\u2019d think Yahoo would be all over this.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t the only ones<\/h2>\n

The current legal structure allows, and perhaps even encourages, government agencies such as the NSA and FBI to use Internet companies to engage in practices that would otherwise be unconstitutional. It is, as always, up to individual tech companies toNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who perhaps understands the issue at hand better than most, had stark warning words for the public following The Intercept\u2019s release:<\/p>\n

<\/p>

Heads up: Any major email service not clearly, categorically denying this tomorrow \u2014 without careful phrasing \u2014 is as guilty as Yahoo. https:\/\/t.co\/cZSDqi4a49<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 4, 2016<\/a><\/blockquote>