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Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

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Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#31

Post by peterkelly »

kefka wrote: post #15

Lets take it a different way: 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…

I've upvoted you, despite disagreeing with you, because I believe it's worth us all discussing the reasoning behind our opinions.

What you've just said is the email equivalent to "she deserved to be raped, because she was dressed like a slut".

Yes, we should take precautions to protect ourselves. But that in no way justifies the privacy intrusions that happened here.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#33

Post by panarky »

singularity2001 wrote: post #14

Google overtly scans your emails for anything.

> Google overtly scans your emails for anything

This is a common argument here.

"Company A secretly collaborates with government agency to subvert their users' security."

"Yes, but Company B collects user data for their own commercial purposes, fully disclosed to the user. Same thing."

Not the same thing.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#34

Post by zmanian »

rdl wrote: post #22

I was honestly a bit unhappy when Stamos left Yahoo in the middle of a bunch of (what seemed like) cool projects for users -- seemed like he was just jumping ship from an objectively pretty crappy company to a continuing-to-accelerate rocketship, presumably for career reasons. However, if it went down like this -- he did probably the least destructive thing possible. I probably would have gone public or done somethin…

This should forever taint Marissa Meyer's reputation. Failure to save Yahoo is understandable. Disregard for user privacy and safety at this scale is unforgivable.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#35

Post by openasocket »

rodgerd wrote: post #13
duaneb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as a user, I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. She lost that trust for good. Realistically, this is every American company. Why trust anyone?

Microsoft and Apple have both been in court during the last 12 months to block US government over-reach. Yahoo joins Amazon in ethusiastically facilitating it. Your assertion isn't realistic, it's nonsense.

I'm curious, when has Amazon facilitated US government over-reach? I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head, and googling only provided a bunch of documentation for AWS's cloud offerings to government agencies.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#36

Post by spdustin »

rodgerd wrote: post #13
duaneb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But as a user, I would never use a service run by Marissa Mayer again. She lost that trust for good. Realistically, this is every American company. Why trust anyone?

Microsoft and Apple have both been in court during the last 12 months to block US government over-reach. Yahoo joins Amazon in ethusiastically facilitating it. Your assertion isn't realistic, it's nonsense.

I must have missed something, can someone elaborate on how Amazon has enthusiastically facilitated government overreach into citizens' privacy?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#37

Post by 2AF3 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #11

I think the attitude here that most tech companies are rolling over and just complying without a single ethical consideration is misplaced. 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 companie…

Isn't this the same as the Snowden revelations?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#38

Post by utefan001 »

zmanian wrote: post #34
rdl wrote: post #22

I was honestly a bit unhappy when Stamos left Yahoo in the middle of a bunch of (what seemed like) cool projects for users -- seemed like he was just jumping ship from an objectively pretty crappy company to a continuing-to-accelerate rocketship, presumably for career reasons. However, if it went down like this -- he did probably the least destructive thing possible. I probably would have gone public or done somethin…

This should forever taint Marissa Meyer's reputation. Failure to save Yahoo is understandable. Disregard for user privacy and safety at this scale is unforgivable.

Don't forget this story.

Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio who claims to have resisted NSA spying is out of prison (2013)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/09/30...

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#40

Post by kefka »

rudolf0 wrote: post #25
kefka wrote: post #15

Lets take it a different way: 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…

Yes, but there's a huge difference between a computer "seeing" your email and a human being searching for keywords within your email to decide whether or not to follow you around and/or arrest you. This report isn't complaining about unencrypted emails. It's about them giving an intelligence agency the equivalent of a `grep "terrorism" | tail -f` for all their users' email. Without a warrant. (Not that a warrant coul…

You're right, that US govt bulk-scanning is terrifying, especially without warrants. But what happens when Facebook scans your private chats and reports your illegal doings to the police? ( http://www.infowars.com/facebook-monitors-your-private-messa... )

What data restrictions do we have that would prevent $dataCompany from sharing data with other actors? I'm sure a "privacy policy" can do something, but in the end, not really. The FTC doesn't require a privacy policy; they can only enforce one and apply lowball fines for bad behavior.

For example, what laws would prevent me from running a "* As a Service", scanning everything, ranging from copyright violations, spammers, criminal enterprises, and today's bugagboo of terrorism; and forwarding each of those things to the relevant authorities? Can a law protect criminal behavior in cases it is illegal? What responsibilities do you have if you know of criminality?

And specifically talking of emails, unless they are encrypted, they are akin to postcards with the content all in the clear.

(And for your example, I get your sentiment, but I'm guessing they'd have a neural net that triggers on examples of terrorism discussion. And they'd run all messages through it. Not saying I agree with it without a warrant...)

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