Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from the U.S. Government

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by josephby on Monday September 09, 2013 @11:11AM (#6353939)

"Yahoo filed suit in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) this morning demanding the right to publicly disclose the number of user data requests that we receive from the U.S. Government under national security statutes."

This is either a first step or a smokescreen, depending on how one looks at it. It's good to know "the number" in order to determine the scope of the problem. It would be better if service providers could actually stop governments from using overly-broad requests to go after user data of indeterminate intelligence-fighting value.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by eli on Monday September 09, 2013 @11:36AM (#6354067)

I agree, but how exactly does a company go about that? Fight the order? For all I know they already do that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by natch on Monday September 09, 2013 @12:17PM (#6354344)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by freehunter on Monday September 09, 2013 @01:02PM (#6354608)

Civil disobedience in the case of Yahoo means their company shots down ala Lavabit. I'm sure they would rather keep running under poor conditions than shut down.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by natch on Monday September 09, 2013 @09:55PM (#6357590)

The government is not going to shut down all of Yahoo just because they publish the value of a 16 bit integer.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by eli on Monday September 09, 2013 @11:24PM (#6357972)

You misunderstand. The government didn't shut down Lavabit. They (allegedly) ordered them to insert a backdoor. Not doing so could have caused the principles to face personal criminal charges. I love my customers, but I'm probably not going to go to federal prison for them.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Yahoo Files Suit Demanding Greater Accountability from th... by natch on Tuesday September 10, 2013 @12:55AM (#6358240)

Yes I know what happened at Lavabit. And seeing the Google/Yahoo execs going to prison to protect their users was exactly what I had in mind. I'm not saying I expect them to do it, but it would be admirable. We could get into hypotheticals about in which scenarios would this even help... and I admit that in many scenarios it would be futile, but for some scenarios, it would be an option, even though it would come at great cost.

[ Parent | on HN ]