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Government threatened Yahoo! to strong-arm it into turning over data

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by The Big Ragu, Sep 12, 2014.

  1. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    http://yahoopolicy.tumblr.com/post/97238899258/shedding-light-on-the-foreign-intelligence-surveillance

    We really have lost our way.

    All of this goes back to 2007-2008, and the Prism program that Edward Snowden exposed. The reason we haven't known about it is that it was all done via the Orwellian FISA secret court, which gets to operate outside of the U.S. constitution and gives the government authoritarian power over us -- and has a law that makes it criminal for anyone strong-armed by the government to even go public with it so we all know what our government is up to.

    The government ordered Yahoo! to turn over data for its warrantless surveillance program. Yahoo! said no. The government said they'd have to pay a fine of $250,000 a day if they didn't comply. Yahoo! challenged the order and lost in the FISA secret court (my editorial:What are we, North Korea?) -- the court that rubber stamps the government trouncing on the Constitution, and ensures it can get away with it by keeping us all ignorant.

    That set the stage for the government expanding the program and surveilling Internet users in secret. Seven other companies were ordered to cooperate. Whether they were threatened with onerous fines isn't known.

    This got a story in the NY Times, but amazingly I have heard very little about it today. To me, this is big enough that everyone should be up in arms and working to roll back the brave new world we've stumbled into.
     
  2. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    It has been a sad evolution of American life -- people don't seem to value privacy anymore. The law-and-order crowd is taken by the idea that if you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't worry; young people are used to everything being out there on social media and don't know what privacy is.

    Doesn't seem to have political lines either, as the program started by the Bush administration is championed by Obama (and Dianne Feinstein).
     
  3. da man

    da man Well-Known Member

    Privacy is long gone. We've been living in 1984 for several years now.
     
  4. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    ......defending our freedom, protecting our way of life.......
     
  5. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Tor. (Until the next-better anonymous browser arrives.)
     
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