US threatened $250K daily fine to get Yahoo to turn over users' email information
When the U.S. government sought user information from Yahoo in 2007 about email in its customers’ accounts, the company resisted what it viewed as an unconstitutionally broad demand.
But Yahoo’s challenges to the controversial National Security Agency PRISM program in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Court of Review failed. And at some point in 2008, court documents show, the U.S. threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if the company didn’t comply with the government’s demands, the Washington Post (reg. req.) reports.
Meanwhile, the U.S. showed documents from the Yahoo case, with the court’s permission, to other tech companies to persuade them to turn over customer information, the Post reports.
Americans didn’t learn about the program, which was discontinued in 2011, until last year, when it was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now in exile in Russia.
The court gave permission for redacted documents detailing what happened to be made public as of Thursday, USA Today reports.
Yahoo’s general counsel, Ron Bell, said in a post on Yahoo’s Global Public Policy page that the company hopes to make the documents publicly available soon.
“A decision to open FISC or FISC-R records to the public is extremely rare,” he wrote, adding: “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.”
The Guardian, the New York Times (reg. req.), the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) and Wired also have stories about the court records newly made public.
Related article:
ABAJournal.com: “US also collects Internet data; does NSA directly tap servers of Google and other top companies?”
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “NSA phone records collection program is illegal and ineffective, government oversight board says”
USA Today: “NSA taps data from 9 major Net firms”
