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Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

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Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#381

Post by nickpsecurity »

tedunangst wrote: post #321
nickpsecurity wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No 2 and No 8 on this cover Yahoo directly: http://mashable.com/2014/06/05/edward-snowden-revelations/ That's them searching for what they want plus seeing everything without notification. There was also a $250,000 a day fine for non-compliance with court orders. That adds up. I can't find the link but they made it grow exponentially over time in another report.

#8 is a weird thing to bring up. Yahoo was going to be fined for not letting the NSA secretly tap their cables? They didn't even know the tapping was being done! How could they be non compliant?

Yeah, that might not totally fit in the point I was making on compliance side. It does fit into overall picture of answering losvedir in how they'd be collecting and searching everything in real-time. The next order might force a tap on the cables on the inside. Much like the "pen register" Lavabit was going to have to add.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#382

Post by efdee »

_audakel wrote: post #169
kefka wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

thats why i like using google allo - end-to-end encryption and expiring chats https://allo.google.com/

It's hard to tell if this is sarcasm. You are aware that Allo has been widely criticized for its deep message inspection when outside of "incognito" mode right?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#383

Post by kefka »

efdee wrote: post #382
_audakel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats why i like using google allo - end-to-end encryption and expiring chats https://allo.google.com/

It's hard to tell if this is sarcasm. You are aware that Allo has been widely criticized for its deep message inspection when outside of "incognito" mode right?

For secure messaging, I trust QTox and properly vetted Onion-aware applications.

Pretty much, if a for-profit company offers it, I can only assume it will be used to the fullest extent for their profitability. And they will, depending on popularity within... certain sectors... heavily leaned on by the US government to provide secret access to their database.

Technologically speaking, that's why I have more innate trust for things like Tox and Tor. It also makes me a very interesting target for "lists". But, whatever. I've done nothing wrong (and not like you can prove otherwise :) .

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#384

Post by tanderson92 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #376
tanderson92 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. > Will this meme never die on HN? There is an obvious counter-example: Apple, a public corporation who publicly fought a similar request. This is a poor example to use to disprove the claim; Apple used the FBI encounter to prove to customers that they were tough on security,…

"Maximizing shareholder value" has become like a Rorschach test, or a "just-so" story that people try to use to retroactively explain everything. Why didn't Yahoo fight their order? Maximizing shareholder value. Why did Apple fight their order? Maximizing shareholder value. An explanation that applies to all outcomes does not actually explain anything.

Regardless of the merit of your claim, it remains the case that the provided example is ineffective.

There were many earlier this year that said standing up to the FBI improved their perception in foreign markets.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#385

Post by CaptSpify »

generj wrote: post #201
aab0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't bet a bent penny on it: "Experts said it was likely that the NSA or FBI had approached other Internet companies with the same demand, since they evidently did not know what email accounts were being used by the target. The NSA usually makes requests for domestic surveillance through the FBI, so it is hard to know which agency is seeking the information. Reuters was unable to confirm whether the 2015 demand…

They later responded. Quoting from Arstechnica's 5:11 ET update: A spokeswoman for Microsoft, Kim Kurseman, e-mailed Ars this statement, and also declined further questions: “We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo.” For its part, Google was the most unequivocal. Spokesman Aaron Stein e-mailed: "We've never received such a request, but if we did, our…

Don't the NSL's typically have a section saying that they have to deny they ever received one?

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#386

Post by jsmthrowaway »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #254
rdl wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the actual personal consequences are for someone going public that there is an NSL requested. I seriously doubt they'd destroy a major public company with lots of employees/voters/users; fines, maybe, and going after execs, but the Government loses most of its power to threaten things once the act is done and everything is public. I think you win in the court of public opinion if it's a broad program li…

>I wonder what the actual personal consequences are for someone going public that there is an NSL requested. Under the Patriot Act its 5 years in federal prison for any individual who violates a gag order.

Can you cite that, please? I've actually read laws trying to find the answer to the original question and I came up empty.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12639809

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#387

Post by surge »

lkmldkmflgm wrote: post #227
tw04 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they've already "made an example" of the only company to truly stand in their way. Look at Qwest - you talk to the average citizen and their takeaway was that justice was served | A corrupt CEO ran the company into the ground and went to prison. Hurrah! Don't pay attention to the fact he denied installing what he considered unconstitutional wire taps for the NSA resulting in the government pulling almost a bill…

The media is mostly controlled and distributed by private companies that collude with the government for their own benefit, Google and Yahoo are exactly such companies.

Well, since most media is advertising dependent, they're dependent on access to information to give you something of value, to in turn sell ads. If investigating or reporting on something shady means, a press operative can no longer be allowed access to an election campaign, or means their correspondents get snubbed at press conferences. They'll cooperate or not report on something, or follow the delivered narrative in lieu of their long term business interests.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#388

Post by wfo »

envy2 wrote: post #171
compiler-guy wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chelsea Manning, who is imprisoned over something similar to this case, may have a different opinion on how nice jail is than you.

Chelsea Manning was imprisoned over something very different: she was a US soldier, not a private citizen, and she made public internal government documents, not a letter explicitly addressed to her. Different standards do (and, IMO, should) apply to leakers who are government employees or members of the armed forces with a security clearance and to private citizens who are not 'leaking' something but rather sharing…

And yet the non-military CJ system can be brutal and harsh. I'd imagine it's certainly possible the first person to disobey a NSL might be made an example of, especially depending on who is in charge of the executive branch at the time. You could be locked in solitary for years until you lose your mind. You could be assigned to prisons in such a way the authorities ensure you would be repeatedly beaten and raped. You could be indefinitely detained without trial or attorney -- the crime is national security related, after all. There is a horde of horribly nasty things that could be done to you even if you aren't military or security clearance. It's worse for the military, but it's bad enough for the rest of us.

Perhaps unlikely, but certainly very scary.

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#389

Post by coldtea »

crdb wrote: post #342
coldtea wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first quote laid out a case using a narrative as a metaphor. It explicitly states its position, and as such is an appropriate use of a quote. Tell us more about the appropriate uses of quotes. Apparently when a quote doesn't explicitly state its position, but it makes it implicitly very clear, it's not appropriate?

No. My premise is that of "rational" argument (and I know the word is loaded in the context of Ayn Rand), that of seeking a better understanding of the world. My position is that emotional manipulation leads to a worse understanding of the world and decrease net welfare by encouraging people to be less rational. As such arguments that abuse emotion are not desirable (perhaps "appropriate" is the wrong word: any argum…

>* My position is that emotional manipulation leads to a worse understanding of the world and decrease net welfare by encouraging people to be less rational.*

That's circular reasoning. "Emotional is bad because it's less rational" (given that rational is the opposite of emotional).

Why would emotional be worse? Or generally worse? It is itself a useful way of deciding, that originated from evolution. In fact there would be a thing as being too rational. Besides, if the ultimate goal is one's happiness (and rationally, there's no way to objectively establish any other goal over it), that's something inherently tied to emotions anyway.

Here's some food for thought:

The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions—mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illus...

Re: Yahoo scanned customer emails for US intelligence

#390

Post by shostack »

Tepix wrote: post #359
boren_ave11 wrote: post #324

Friendly reminder: the FBI and NSA are part of the executive branch of government and report to the President of the United States. Make no mistake -- there absolutely is someone who could stop this. The fact that this clearly unconstitutional activity not only continued after being exposed, but actually appears to has expanded in its scope, leaves us with but one conclusion: the President supports this activity and…

Or he is being blackmailed by an entity that knows enough of his secrets to destroy him.

Ah, I see you too read Influx.
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