Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

The government has been doing an excellent job of basically extorting these companies into compliance. They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders.

You aren't legally allowed to talk to other companies in the same position. Most your legal team probably doesn't get to know what's going on. You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt.

I'm not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual's civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair.

You're knowingly sending your data to a 3rd party. You're not encrypting. It's not through the USPS (special protections).

It seems bloody evident that, of course, your email provider can read your emails! Unless you're encrypting with GPG, then they can (and they can still read the signing keys).

Yahoo, Google, and friends all scan, dedup, and all sorts of tricks to determine marketing and quality content (spamming). If you're worried, run your own mailserver. It's what I do, along with using gmail. But I know that, at any time, people/scripts/ai are reading everything sent and received.

edit: I'd much prefer to hear commentary/how wrong/how right/how crazy I am, rather than -1's.I'd like to hear a discussion about the "Secrecy of text written on postcards"....

  Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to
  search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific
  information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according
  to people familiar with the matter.

But I suppose that the order forbids "disclosure", and that statement is arguably disclosure...