Under the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other laws can intelligence agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA), ask U.S. phone and Internet companies to violate the privacy of their customers by giving them data. In doing so the data should aid foreign intelligence-gathering efforts for multiple reasons such as prevention of terrorists attacks.
Former employees reported that Yahoo simply complied with the demand from the US government to search every incoming mail for a certain set of characters. Yahoo said in a statement that “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States”.
Whether other email service providers have received a requests for domestic surveillance is unsure. A Google spokesman told he would say ‘No way’ if they received a request. While a spokesman from Microsoft said the following: “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo.” Whether they had received a request for surveillance or not is not commented on. A Facebook spokesman said that “Facebook has never received a request like the one described in these news reports from any government, and if we did we would fight it”. Twitter reacted accordingly by saying “We’ve never received a request like this, and were we to receive it we’d challenge it in a court”.
Spying demands don’t fall favorably with the customers. Apple refused to break-in into an encrypted iPhone that was used in the San Bernadino terrorist attack that killed 14 people and seriously injured 22 more. While tech companies become better every day at encrypting data, requests for spying will increase. Apple, as do others, believe that customers expect from tech companies to stand up to novel spying demands.
Some argue that users’ security will be hurt when complying with an order to check all email traffic. I personally don’t find it strange that intelligence agencies ask companies such as Yahoo for their assistance. All companies that interact with user created information should, if asked be able to carry out these sort of actions but it should be in the open. If a company is turning over information, they should give a copy of the order and the data they have to the person that created it, person that received it and the person that requested it. This cloak and dagger stuff is the reason why so many people out there now distrust governments and organisations.
Sources:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-04/yahoo-admits-secretly-hacking-customer-accounts-us-intelligence
Hi Kyona! Thank you for posting such an insightful post about privacy, especially we are now living in the digital era where most of our life are more more digitized than ever. I think that those companies that can have access to our privacy information, should not give access or provide information to third parties without our consent. I think that is a violation of our rights, even though the reason of it might be for the sake of our security. This post reminds me of Edward Snowden’s case where he leaked top classified information to the public, such as in the case of one service provider in the US that tapped into the citizens record.
No one has been telling us explicitly that our data and information, our clicks and our activity in the internet is much more valuable than what we have imagined. It tells us so much more about us and our life, our demographic, our hobby, our likes, and our interests. No one knows what happen to our information once we shared them to external parties. While some of us maybe are not convinced why do we need a protection in the digital world, some people certainly need one, such as victims of domestic violence, whistle blower and etc.
If it is really necessary for the aforementioned companies to disclose our data, it should be conducted in transparency together with the consent of all the involved parties.