Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

news.trust.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 417 posts

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#41

Post by Redoubts »

peterkelly wrote: post #31
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.

I think it's closer to "you deserved your message to be read, since you put it on the back of a postcard". But ok.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#42

Post by greenyoda »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #19
greenyoda wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not a hard question to answer. You either are or are not searching all emails in realtime at the behest of the NSA." It's easy to answer if you're not. If you are, you can't answer (at least not truthfully).

How much trouble would someone like Google be in if they gave a "warrant canary" style answer? "I'm sorry, we are unable to answer your question" would speak volumes without actually saying anything. But I suppose that the order forbids "disclosure", and that statement is arguably disclosure...

The article says:

"Alphabet Inc's Google and Microsoft Corp, two major U.S. email service providers, did not respond to requests for comment."

Isn't that pretty much saying "I'm sorry, we are unable to answer your question"? If they weren't doing the same thing as Yahoo, they could say so.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#43

Post by WallowC_33 »

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.

Sure, as far as we know, MS and Apple have been in the public eye as being against government overreach. I suspect it's less about protecting customers from the government and more about protecting themselves, though.

But one needs their hands and toes to count the other areas in which Microsoft and Apple have conducted themselves... poorly?

Apple in the poaching employees lawsuit. Spurious lawsuits over "design" (ie rounded corners on rectangles) trademarks. Colluding with music execs to push customers to their streaming music service (instead of ad supported "free" streaming on labels sites). Since this is about a CEO hate, Steve Jobs was a complete asshole by a number of accounts. Horribly abusive.

Microsoft... well their track record should be well established. The absolute worst of which was releasing a mass market OS that was egregiously insecure by default (yet, around here, the conversation often is "I wish MS tested like they did back in the day." when webcams break, but I digress). Again, the CEO thing, Ballmer was borderline incompetent, Gates was involved in a number of shady market capture schemes.

But you know, because in this one context of government over-reach, they did a bit better than Yahoo!, the parents position that they're all untrustable is complete nonsense.

The only thing "wrong" Marissa did was not make a shit ton of money for Yahoo! No one would give this story another thought if Yahoo!'s stock was worth $100 more than it was when she started.

That's about all MS and Apple have done "right". That end justified the means.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#44

Post by lawnchair_larry »

idlewords wrote: post #21
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…

The most damning part of this story is that Mayer decided to comply without telling her chief security officer. That really does make it look like Yahoo rolled over without a fight.

Since it had a gag order, she likely wouldn't have been allowed to tell him. The government doesn't care about the security implications of these backdoors, they just want the data.

Also, Yahoo spent many years fighting similar requests (I think before anyone else did) and won nothing.

She also was obviously being advised by Ron Bell, the GC. If she didn't tell Stamos, it was probably based on the guidance of Mr. Bell. I'm not sure we can fault Mayer much on this one.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#47

Post by tptacek »

utefan001 wrote: post #38
zmanian wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Nacchio is no hero. He ran a $50MM pump-and-dump scam that personally netted him millions of dollars in profits at the expense of common shareholders, and he was indicted in a wave of similar prosecutions in the wake of the Enron fiasco. His offenses are there in black and white: with full knowledge that his company faced materially adverse changes unknown to his investors, he not only promoted the company but privately (and illegally) sold his own shares.

You do people like Stamos a huge disservice by drawing this comparison. People like Nacchio are exploiting the good work real privacy advocates do, for their own personal enrichment.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#49

Post by rdl »

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…

The person I'd question the most, after Marissa, is Yahoo!'s general counsel Ron S. Bell (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronsbell).
Post reply on HN