{"id":80796,"date":"2016-10-17T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80796"},"modified":"2016-10-15T15:53:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-15T14:53:45","slug":"delete-your-yahoo-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/delete-your-yahoo-account\/","title":{"rendered":"Delete Your Yahoo Account"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no good reason to have a Yahoo account these days. But after the bombshell report by Reuters 4 Oct 2016<\/a>,\u00a0indicating the enormous, faltering web company designed a bespoke email-wiretap service for the U.S. government, we now know\u00a0that a Yahoo account is a toxic surveillance liability.<\/p>\n

Reuters\u2019s Joseph Menn is reporting that just last year, Yahoo chose to comply with a classified \u201cdirective\u201d to build \u201ca custom software program to search all of its customers\u2019 incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials\u201d \u2014 the NSA in particular.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A security guard attempts to stop photographers from taking pictures outside the Yahoo logo at its office in Hong Kong on Oct. 18, 2005.
Photo: Samantha Sin\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s still unknown what the \u201cspecific information\u201d here was \u2014 or is \u2014 but Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer\u2019s decision not to put up any fight against the extremely broad request apparently prompted the departure of then-Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos, now head of security at Facebook.<\/p>\n

Reached via Twitter DM, Stamos told The Intercept that he\u2019s \u201cnot commenting at all on Yahoo.\u201d When asked if Facebook had ever received a similar government directive, Stamos replied that he would \u201cpass that to Facebook comms.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Facebook spokesperson told The Intercept,\u00a0\u201cFacebook has never received a request like the one described in these news reports from any government, and if we did we would fight it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It remains unclear what form the directive took, though according to Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the best guess is that it invoked Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the bulk collection of communications for the purpose of targeting a foreign individual.<\/p>\n

But this Yahoo program doesn\u2019t appear to have had even an ostensibly non-U.S. target. Rather, literally every single person with a Yahoo email inbox was evidently placed under surveillance, regardless of citizenship.<\/p>\n

Crocker said the Yahoo program seems \u201cin some ways more problematic and broader\u201d than previously revealed NSA bulk surveillance programs like PRISM or Upstream collection efforts. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of an interpretation\u201d of the Reuters report, he explained, \u201cthat doesn\u2019t mean Yahoo isn\u2019t being asked to scan all domestic communications without a warrant\u201d or probable cause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Fourth Amendment implications of that are pretty staggering,\u201d Crocker said.<\/p>\n

The Yahoo program, as described, also differs from previous federal data grabs in that the scanning occurred in real time, as messages arrived in a user\u2019s inbox, rather than being conducted in an archive of stored communications.<\/p>\n

The fact that every single Yahoo email account was subject to this surveillance seems at odds with figures in Yahoo\u2019s transparency report<\/a>, which claims fewer than 20,000 accounts were tapped at the behest of the U.S. government. It would also appear to run contrary to the spirit of two quotations on Yahoo\u2019s transparency site, where Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell claims, \u201cWe fight any requests that we deem unclear, improper, overbroad, or unlawful,\u201d and Mayer says, \u201cWe\u2019ve worked hard over the years to earn our users\u2019 trust and we fight hard to preserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Reuters report is sourced to \u201ctwo former employees and a third person apprised of the events,\u201d rather than government officials \u2014 raising the possibility that similar orders have been issued to other major service providers.<\/p>\n

An Apple spokesperson said\u00a0\u201cwe have never received a request of this type,\u201d and that \u201cIf we were to receive one, we would oppose it in court.\u201d This spokesperson also\u00a0pointed to a section from a recent public letter by CEO Tim Cook<\/a>, which he said was still accurate:<\/p>\n

Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.<\/p>\n

A Google spokesperson provided the following statement:\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: \u2018no way.\u2019\u201d The spokesperson later clarified that the company has not received a \u201cdirective\u201d or \u201corder\u201d to that effect, either.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo,\u201d a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.\u00a0The spokesperson would not comment on the record as to whether the company has ever received such a request.<\/p>\n

Asked whether Twitter had ever received such a directive aimed at its messaging system, Nu Wexler, the company\u2019s public policy communications chief, replied that \u201cFederal law prohibits us from answering your question, and we\u2019re currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more information about government requests.\u201d Twitter filed the lawsuit<\/a> in 2014.<\/p>\n

In a subsequent statement, Wexler clarified:<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve never received a request like this, and were we to receive it we\u2019d challenge it in a court. Separately, while federal law prohibits companies from being able to share information about certain types of national security related requests, we are currently suing the Justice Department for the ability to disclose more information about government requests.<\/p>\n

Yahoo issued this statement: \u201cYahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement<\/a> that \u201cthe order issued to Yahoo appears to be unprecedented and unconstitutional. The government appears to have compelled Yahoo to conduct precisely the type of general, suspicionless search that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt is deeply disappointing that Yahoo declined to challenge this sweeping surveillance order, because customers are counting on technology companies to stand up to novel spying demands in court.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is how to delete<\/a> your Yahoo account.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

Update: October 4, 2016<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This article has been updated to include comments from Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Facebook, \u00a0Yahoo, and Apple.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sam Biddle – <\/a>\u2709<\/span>sam.biddle@theintercept.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Oct 2016 – There\u2019s no good reason to have a Yahoo account these days. Yahoo chose to comply with a classified \u201cdirective\u201d to build \u201ca custom software program to search all of its customers\u2019 incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials\u201d \u2014 the NSA in particular.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80796\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}