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Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

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Re: Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

#3

Post by joshavant »

Weren't these requests, which Yahoo objected to, intended to stay secret, by the wishes of the government?

Consider if Yahoo refused to honor the requests, and began accruing the fines. Presumably, if they didn't pay the huge bill for their fines, what would happen?

Surely, $250k/day would rack up fast... As I see it, eventually Yahoo would rack up such a bill that they couldn't afford it, and any collection of the fee by the government would force Yahoo to close its doors. At that point, surely they'd have to reveal something to the general public about said requests, and the fines, and everything else going on behind the scenes...

Re: Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

#4

Post by melvinmt »

joshavant wrote: post #3

Weren't these requests, which Yahoo objected to, intended to stay secret, by the wishes of the government? Consider if Yahoo refused to honor the requests, and began accruing the fines. Presumably, if they didn't pay the huge bill for their fines, what would happen? Surely, $250k/day would rack up fast... As I see it, eventually Yahoo would rack up such a bill that they couldn't afford it, and any collection of the f…

"As I see it, eventually Yahoo would rack up such a bill that they couldn't afford it, and any collection of the fee by the government would force Yahoo to close its doors."

Yahoo is about to get $20bn+ in cash in about 2 weeks, so they can hold out these fines for about 80,000 days.

Re: Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

#5

Post by benologist »

joshavant wrote: post #3

Weren't these requests, which Yahoo objected to, intended to stay secret, by the wishes of the government? Consider if Yahoo refused to honor the requests, and began accruing the fines. Presumably, if they didn't pay the huge bill for their fines, what would happen? Surely, $250k/day would rack up fast... As I see it, eventually Yahoo would rack up such a bill that they couldn't afford it, and any collection of the f…

I was thinking about that because it seemed like a cost they could just afford to ignore ($91m/yr), this was probably not the limit of the penalties they could have faced.

Re: Feds Threatened to Fine Yahoo $250K Daily for Not Complying with NSA's PRISM

#10

Post by xnull »

This is nothing compared to what allegedly happened to QWest. When the US Government was forcing telecom by telecom to install taps into their business's core routing hubs Joseph Nacchio, the CEO at the time, dug his heels in demanding legal avenues to avoid turning his back on QWest's customers. The US threatened to pull out large contracts that made up a large part of QWest's business.

Furthermore, having been served a National Security Letter, Nacchio was not able to speak to his company or shareholders about the situation.

Nacchio continued to insist on legal avenues and Uncle Sam did exactly what it threatened. Nacchio warned major stakeholders that all of the major QWest contracts were about to go belly up.

The US government threw Nacchio in prison for insider trading.

Oh and then QWest went bankrupt and was bought by competitor CenturyLink (who presumably had fewer difficulties complying).

Sometimes the market has more than one invisible hand.

Edit: A good point by a fellow commentor - no independent investigation has been performed into the QWest story. I looked but could not find FOIA information online.

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