Report: Yahoo! snooped on people's e-mail for NSA / FBI

[The Big Ragu]

Exclusive: Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for U.S. intelligence - sources

More evidence that the worst fears of civil libertarians have come to fruition.

My opinion: It's bad enough that the warrants the CIA / NSA can get rubber stamped, forcing companies to hand over info about their customers, are done secretly. It's antithetical to everything America pays lip service to valuing. But in this case, Yahoo! not only complied like a sheep, it sounds like they agreed to the broadest of directives -- in which EVERYONE was snooped on by Big Brother in a wide dragnet, and on top of it, they agreed to write a special program to search people's e-mails. What Apple at least fought last year with the FBI trying to strong arm them to hack that phone. So Yahoo! effectively turned their business over to the NSA and didn't tell their customers that they were violating them. It's shameful -- from the perspective of our government having gotten out of control and turned into something Orwellian, and worse, from the perspective of Yahoo!, which just went along with it. You couldn't pay me enough to do any sort of business with any of Yahoo!'s dog**** businesses.

 

[MisterCreosote]

The Fourth Amendment isn't one of the important amendments.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

What did the CIA and NSA do with everyone's fantasy sports information? Anyone here use Yahoo for anything else?
PS: Ragu, I agree with you completely. It is not only outrageous, it doesn't work. Our terrorist catchers are drowning in a sea of useless (to them) data.

 

[dixiehack]

So you're saying someone cares about my fantasy team after all?

 

[poindexter]

The important thing to remember is that management got their bonuses and options. And golden parachutes.

 

[The Big Ragu]

What did the CIA and NSA do with everyone's fantasy sports information? Anyone here use Yahoo for anything else?
PS: Ragu, I agree with you completely. It is not only outrageous, it doesn't work. Our terrorist catchers are drowning in a sea of useless (to them) data.

To me, the bolded part doesn't matter -- even though I think you are right. I don't even want to have the conversation about "whether it works or not." Ends don't justify means.

It's what Creosote said. We're supposed to be free from that kind of thing -- it treats everyone like a criminal or enemy, and puts us under the thumb of a secretive organization that isn't beholden to anyone and will grab more and more power to try to control everyone (and will run over people and their freedoms). We're not free people when we go down that road. Let the FBI try to catch criminals. But they should be doing it by gathering evidence with probable cause demonstrating that whoever they target actually broke the law. And they should have a high bar to hurdle to get permission to surveil anyone. The fact that they get rubber stamps to put everyone under surveillance a la the KGB is just wrong. And screw Yahoo! for not fighting it and going public.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

If you have nothing to hide, why worry?

 

[JimmyHoward33]

It's creepy and it's Orwellian and it sucks.

But is there any chance the possibility this could happen is buried in the terms of service that just about everyone scrolls through and doesn't read?

 

[bigpern23]

What did the CIA and NSA do with everyone's fantasy sports information? Anyone here use Yahoo for anything else?
PS: Ragu, I agree with you completely. It is not only outrageous, it doesn't work. Our terrorist catchers are drowning in a sea of useless (to them) data.

A couple guys in my fantasy league already mentioned moving to a different host next year because of this. A small and ultimately insignificant gesture, to be sure, but as you noted, nobody uses it for anything else, so realistically, it's the only way for users to voice their disapproval.

 

[Small Town Guy]

Hold up, folks. I still use Yahoo mail, as do many people I know (we hold weekly get togethers). Don't relegate us to the Excite bin quite yet. It's tabs feature makes it so much easier for me to use with work than Gmail. And because of that, I will stay with it through every privacy intrusion, every security hack, every time it randomly and inexplicably goes down. But, yes, this report is incredible and outrageous.

 

[Buck]

I'm suggesting the NIAFL move to another host next baseball season.
This is disturbing. The large number of people who believed that Apple should've complied last year was disturbing.
The growing number of Americans who are unconcerned about this type of government overreach and intrusion is disturbing.

 

[FileNotFound]

I use Yahoo Mail as my spam bin. I hope the NSA had fun reading through that ****.

 

[Earthman]

I'm suggesting the NIAFL move to another host next baseball season.
This is disturbing. The large number of people who believed that Apple should've complied last year was disturbing.
The growing number of Americans who are unconcerned about this type of government overreach and intrusion is disturbing.

I think in protest that The NIAFL should just all pick subversive team names.
Putin Hots?

 

[da man]

The Snowdens.

 

[Machine Head]

I think in protest that The NIAFL should just all pick subversive team names.
Putin Hots?

If we leave Yahoo! all the NIAFL message board posts there from Day One will be lost forever.

Everything is there. Everything.

You can scroll through the years of posts. Wonder what the Feds thought reading some of that stuff.

For my team name I call dibs on Dirty Commies.

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Anyone who think Yahoo itself isn't using the feds as an excuse to do its own data mining of its customers' personal messages is IMO living in a dream world.

 

[Earthman]

Anyone who think Yahoo itself isn't using the feds as an excuse to do its own data mining of its customers' personal messages is IMO living in a dream world.

Anyone who thinks that Google and Facebook have not done the same thing are fooling themselves

 

[Michael_ Gee]

Anyone who thinks that Google and Facebook have not done the same thing are fooling themselves

I am not on social media for the very same reason. At the last job I had before I thank God retired, I dealt with a lot of advertising trade journals. They'd put you off social media for life.

 

[heyabbott]

The Fourth Amendment isn't one of the important amendments.

It's twice as good as the 2nd amendment

 

[Football_Bat]

Al Davis Qaeda