Yahoo Sells All Its Users Private Email Contents to U.S. Agencies for Small Price

[rpfan2008]

(Mathaba) Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services it provides to "law enforcement" and spy agencies has leaked onto the web.

http://cryptome.org/isp-spy/yahoo-spy.pdf

After earlier reports this week that Yahoo had blocked an FOIA Freedom of Information release of its "law enforcement and intelligence price list", someone helpfully provided a copy of the Yahoo company’s spying guide to the whistleblower web site Cryptome.org.

The 17-page guide, which Yahoo has tried to suppress via legal letters to the Cryptome.org site run by freedom of information champion John Young, describes Yahoo’s policies on keeping the data of Yahoo Email and Yahoo Groups users, as well as the surveillance and spying capabilities it can give to the U.S. government and its agencies.

The Yahoo document is a price list for these spying services and has already resulted in many people closing down their accounts in protest. However, closing a Yahoo account is not as easy as one might expect: users have reported great difficulty in finding the link to delete their account, and, Yahoo will still keep data for another 90 days.

more>>> (http://mathaba.net/news/?x=622292)

[GunnyFreedom]

Thank you, vestigial Y! account now obliterated.

[Stary Hickory]

Closing down mine tonight, all I need to know. I will spread the word.

[tmosley]

Good to know that all of my email is available for free access by authorities. Thanks Yahoo!

I guess I need to switch to Gmail.

[GunnyFreedom]

Bear in mind, Yahoo is surely not the only ones who do this; but we can't shut ourselves off from the entire Internet. If every time something like this gets out, a company loses massive tons of subscribers, then other companies may get the clue that cooperating with Big Brother is a bad idea.

I would be more than willing to establish a startup gmail/yahoo like company on some remote island free from the reach of US warrants and warrantless demands for data if we could get it funded. In addition to "punishing" those companies that have been proven to sell data to the DHS/FBI etc; we should reward those companies who do NOT.

I know of no such company offhand. Does anybody else?

[StudentForPaul08]

What email service doesn't sell you out? I have Yahoo and i am willing to switch.

[GunnyFreedom]

http://www.hushmail.com/

?

[paulpwns]

Assume EVERYTHING you do on the net is tracked.

[Bryan]

Assume EVERYTHING you do on the net is tracked.
+1.

Thanks for the report, however-- it does help get someone to see the light.

[GunnyFreedom]

Anybody want to send me something requiring security, feel free to do so at:

gunnyfreedom@hush.com

:D

[tangent4ronpaul]

More info here:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=221143

-t

[vegaspilot03]

**deleted

[bew2005]

Did anyone actually read the document? I believe the headline of the article, the headline of this thread, and the comments are quite misleading. I have a Yahoo! account and was up in arms like all of you and had already pulled up a complaint window to let Yahoo! know exactly how I felt....until I actually read the thing...

Yahoo! does not just set a price tag out for personal information. They require a subpoena, search warrant, etc. before any information is handed over. The cost is simply reimbursement to Yahoo! for locating the desired information. As a major public company, Yahoo! is certainly entangled in legal battles constantly. This form looks like a guideline to law enforcement who are investigating someone for a crime and how they can go about locating those records through Yahoo!. In short, this form is to help Yahoo! more efficiently deal with these types of requests.

I was under the impression from this thread that Yahoo! was funneling personal information to the government and raking in cash - that does not appear to be the content of this form at all.

/replaces tinfoil hat back on head

[tangent4ronpaul]

Did anyone actually read the document? I believe the headline of the article, the headline of this thread, and the comments are quite misleading. I have a Yahoo! account and was up in arms like all of you and had already pulled up a complaint window to let Yahoo! know exactly how I felt....until I actually read the thing...

Yahoo! does not just set a price tag out for personal information. They require a subpoena, search warrant, etc. before any information is handed over. The cost is simply reimbursement to Yahoo! for locating the desired information. As a major public company, Yahoo! is certainly entangled in legal battles constantly. This form looks like a guideline to law enforcement who are investigating someone for a crime and how they can go about locating those records through Yahoo!. In short, this form is to help Yahoo! more efficiently deal with these types of requests.

I was under the impression from this thread that Yahoo! was funneling personal information to the government and raking in cash - that does not appear to be the content of this form at all.

/replaces tinfoil hat back on head

I hope you know that under the patriot act (sic) federal agents can write theirr own warrants - called national security letters.... and that they are WIDELY misused!

-t

[bew2005]

I hope you know that under the patriot act (sic) federal agents can write theirr own warrants - called national security letters.... and that they are WIDELY misused!

-t

Yes, which is a grave concern of mine. However, my point in this thread is that Yahoo! is not streaming information to the government for pay (as was implied). My grief with the Patriot Act is with Congress, the President, etc. - not Yahoo!.

[speciallyblend]

i might simply delete my yahoo account because i did not ask for the new changes and i want my old yahoo back. sucks since i was a customer from day one, still have a yahoo email with a name and no numbers

[idirtify]

If you think Yahoo is bad, check out Sprint:

http://arstechnica.com/telecom/news/2009/12/sprint-fed-customer-gps-data-to-leos-over-8-million-times.ars

“Sprint fed customer GPS data to cops over 8 million times”

[youngbuck]

This sucks. I've been using Yahoo for a very long time. Basically all of my online accounts are registered to it, and quite often the email address itself is the login/username. Now I'm gonna have to change.

[tangent4ronpaul]

This sucks. I've been using Yahoo for a very long time. Basically all of my online accounts are registered to it, and quite often the email address itself is the login/username. Now I'm gonna have to change.

It won't matter. Yahoo's book leaked - assume everyone else out there has similar policies. You might try eskimo - as they are a mom and pop that didn't sell out to big corporate gvmt - but they are not free and you better know UNIX!

-t

[Dieseler]

Everything is compromised.
Nothing is secure on the web.

[dr. hfn]

They need to be sued and attacked in court for this!

[bew2005]

They need to be sued and attacked in court for this!

For turning over information under subpoena?

[youngbuck]

For turning over information under subpoena?

Perhaps you should reread the OP.

[Mach]

C'mon guys... it's all over the place.

http://www.google-watch.org/

[bew2005]

Perhaps you should reread the OP.

I have. Might I suggest you actually read the document. :)

[DamianTV]

What email service doesn't sell you out? I have Yahoo and i am willing to switch.

I dont. Well, didnt. Ran an ISP but went out of business, and I wouldnt give any bit of information to any cop without a warrant. Period. Even then it was always for one specific account, and I would have refused a global demand for all of our records if they ever threw one my way.

Best advice, try to find a small local company thats probably struggling and offer em a couple bucks to host your email.

And for the record, fuck Google too.

[GunnyFreedom]

hushmail

[Carson]

There was a story on fark a while back about this sort of thing. Somewhere there is a rule that if they give up peoples information they have to pay a hefty penalty.

So much information has been turned over on all of us that the fines add up to astronomical numbers. I can't remember the bill a while back they were working on but the communications people wanted amnesty fro their transgressions put into it.




P.S. I don't see it yet but I have come across these stories;

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/response-to-doj-motion.html

http://news.cnet.com/2100-1028_3-6077353.html?part=rss&tag=6077353&subj=news%3fasses



P.S.P.S. I did find this thread at fark but it is not the one.

Man, when President Russ Feingold and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer fine AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth a couple billion dollars or so each, the shiat is really going to hit the fan (the law they violated allows fines of $130,000 per day per violation, with a maximum fine of $1.325 million per violation-so if they turned over the records of millions of people, the maximum fine could be in the trillions).

http://www.fark.com/cgi/comments.pl?IDLink=2059635

[youngbuck]

I have. Might I suggest you actually read the document. :)

Alright, it looks like I might be wasting my time here, but let me lead you through this.

They need to be sued and attacked in court for this!
Then you say:

For turning over information under subpoena?


They didn't turn in any information under subpoena. That is why I suggested you reread the OP. Cryptome leaked the document.

Yahoo objected to a FOIA request for the document on the grounds that the information was proprietary.

[bew2005]

Alright, it looks like I might be wasting my time here, but let me lead you through this.

Then you say:



They didn't turn in any information under subpoena. That is why I suggested you reread the OP. Cryptome leaked the document.

Yahoo objected to a FOIA request for the document on the grounds that the information was proprietary.

Here's the deal:

Yahoo has a policy on how long it keeps information on its servers. It passed that policy onto law enforcement agencies (so they probably won't cry if Yahoo can't find an email from 2007). If law enforcement want this information, they must obtain a subpoena or a warrant - private information is not being handed over willy-nilly as was being implied.

With that, I am done.