US Gov Threatened Yahoo with $250,000++ Fine Per Day For Not Complying With NSA Data Requests

[kpete]

Yahoo $250,000 daily fine over NSA data refusal was set to double 'every week'
Company releases 1,500 documents from failed suit against NSA over user data requests and cooperation with Prism compliance


The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency, according to court documents unsealed on Thursday.

In a blogpost, http://yahoopolicy.tumblr.com/post/97238899258/shedding-light-on-the-foreign-intelligence-surveillance the company said the 1,500 pages of once-secret documents http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/11/yahoo-wants-fisa-objections-revealed shine further light on Yahoo’s previously disclosed clash with the NSA over access to its users’ data. The size of the daily fine was set to double every week that Yahoo refused to comply, the documents show.

The papers outline Yahoo’s secret and ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to resist the government’s demands for the tech firm to cooperate with the NSA’s controversial Prism surveillance programme, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.

“The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government’s surveillance efforts,” said the company’s general counsel, Ron Bell, in a Tumblr post.



MORE:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-documents-fine-user-data-refusal

[99Forever]

1. Move along... move along...

... nuttin' ta see here.

[LittleBlue]

2. These are the beginnings of fascism

Brutally punish any who resist. Obama is carrying out Shrub's wet dream. Sickening.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. Oh malarkey.....

[JDPriestly]

6. It is the unfortunate truth when it comes to the NSA.

The government needs to completely open its books on the NSA spying -- just make the details public about the program. Let each of us see what is in the NSA files about us if anything.

Until they do that, we are free to and in fact probably need to and will fantasize about any extreme conduct by the NSA that we are able to imagine.

That's the nature of the secrecy beast. It invites the imagination of those who are not privy to the secrets to fantasize, think of theories, create myths, whatever, just to fill the big holes in the information that is available.

Openness is the friend and secrecy the enemy of the truth.

The truth is the friend of trust. And trust is essential not only in a democracy but also in a capitalist system. If I can't trust the merchant down the street, I probably won't buy his products. If I can't trust my government, I probably won't buy what it tells me.

The only people who know what is going on in the NSA are the people who are at the very top of the NSA bureaucracy, and even they probably don't know the reality of what is going on.

Further, while secrecy in some things is necessary, the price of secrecy is paranoia -- the opposite of trust, the opposite of confidence.

Time to stop the excessive secrecy. If somebody wants to spy on me, at least let them do it openly. If I know there is a peeping tom in the neighborhood, I can watch out, I can make sure I dress in the closet, I can call the police if I see something suspicious. But if there is a peeping Tom and I don't know about it, I can be his victim or whatever you want to call it.

The NSA is way out of place with its excessive spying on ordinary people.

The CIA and the military can spy on the military activities of China and other countries all they want. But it and the NSA should stop sticking their noses into the personal business of ordinary people -- or seeming to be sticking their noses into the personal business of ordinary people.

If the NSA were doing legitimate spying, spying that ordinary Americans would gladly support, it would not need a secret court to cover up its activities. It could be open about them.

[VanillaRhapsody]

8. No its just not....

you apparently do not understand Republican mentality.....

[awoke_in_2003]

26. It isn't a republican versus democrat thing...

it is the security apparatus flexing their muscles, and no president is going to oppose them.

[nashville_brook]

11. "the price of secrecy is paranoia" -- hell to the yes

there's something our current zeitgeist that feels very 1974, watergate all over again. it's different now of course -- more nihilistic and tribal.

by not prosecuting and/or pardoning state criminals (over and over again) we've created a constant form of mass cognitive dissonance that some process as paranoia, some process into patriotism and most process into apathy. we see there's two sets of rules. the question is, how much is this going to fuck ME up.

[awoke_in_2003]

25. It is not shrub's wet dream...

it is the wet dream of the security apparatus in this country. Regardless of who is in the Oval Office, they are going to comply with them, if they know what is good for them.

[diabeticman]

29. Beginnings? I hate to push you into the ice cold pool of reality; BUT, we are neck deep in the

pool of fascism. We have police states, we can be arrested for not carrying ID and the rich and corporate America get to treat american citizens like serfs

[Triana]

4. Snowden didn't expose Prism. I remember discussing it here

in 2002 or so. Snowden didn't really tell many of us anything we didn't already know.

[Savannahmann]

5. Ah but before Snowden

The defenders of the Faith could claim it was CT nonsense and denounce anyone who talked about it as nuts who should be ignored, or banned from the site to the bowels of the internet where CT was welcome.

After it broke, they took the same tact, it was old news, we all knew anyway, and we have to do these things to protect the nation, or something.

[DirkGently]

15. Right. First it's "paranoia," then it's "old news."

Anything to dismiss an inconvenient truth.

Sad to see workaday people so comfortable with transparently specious reasoning.

[JDPriestly]

7. Snowden showed us the documents that proved the programs exist.

That is what Snowden contributed.

When I read the first court order that was released -- was it Verizon? -- I nearly fell out of my chair. Horrors! How could anyone read that and think it complied in any way with the admonition and limitation of the Fourth Amendment. Takes a great talent for double-think to be at ease with even just that first document that Snowden presented to the world.

[VanillaRhapsody]

9. Snowden didn't show US.....anything....

WE are still waiting for HIM to show us anything......

but he sure as shit showed it to the Chinese and Russians! Shows where his loyalties lie....hiding behind Putin....what a joke he is!

[JDPriestly]

20. Did you read the Verizon order? Do you understand what it means?

Have you read the Fourth Amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

http://constitution.findlaw.com/amendment4.html

The Verizon order is overbroad. It does not "particularly describ[e] the place to be searched and the . . . things to be seized." Further, it is not based "upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation."

That is all we need to know to understand that the NSA's programs are violating the Constitution or at least were violating the Constitution.

[LondonReign2]

28. Good luck getting that one to read anything

I have rocks in my backyard with better reasoning capabilities

[stupidicus]

14. well, denial just requires a declaration

http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/everything-we-learned-from-edward-snowden-in-2013-20131231

WHat I find particularly amusing about that declaration is how easily it is overcome. For example, why praytell, are the big boys whining thusly

The National Security Agency has already referred the case to the Justice Department, and James Clapper, Obama’s director of National Intelligence, has said that Snowden’s leaks have done “huge, grave damage” to “our intelligence capabilities.” http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/why-edward-snowden-is-a-hero

if all he shared was common knowledge to so many?

The list of things one needs to suspend (or be lacking in) to do such is likely a very lengthy one, and includes character deficits of the kind they indict Snowden with/for.

[DirkGently]

16. Put your finger on some cognitive dissonance there.

NSA revelations were nothing, but NSA revelations were traitorous?

Which is it, Defenders of the Status Quo?

[stupidicus]

18. indeed

back at the beginning of this, I went many rounds with the blue link champ over this.

It seemed as simple then as it is is now -- any and all legislative remedial efforts that they've attempted or will ONLY indicate the unconstitutional/illegal nature of that they are attempting to remedy, and there's no denying BHO's ownership in whole or in part for the violations.

They've really been defenseless on the matter from the start. Rightwingers cling to their guns and bibles, and well, some "centrists" cling to ____ and _____ (fill in the blanks)

[JDPriestly]

21. Speaking of the blue-link champ, whatever happened to her/him/it/them?

[Generic Other]

23. Outsourced...

[stupidicus]

24. good question

I'm thinking they put to many links into to small of a space, and it turned into a black hole that sucked them in.

All jesting aside, I've read about the departure but never any details as to why, just mostly the functional equivalent of "to spend more time with the family" type stuff.

[RoccoR5955]

12. I remember...

Olbermann talking about it when he had his show on MSNBC.
How the offices of Verizon had a "secret" room that was off limits, and all communications were being funneled through it.

[Triana]

22. Yes. I remember that too. Of course the media didn't report on that.

But I remember quite a few posts on it here. People were rightly pissed. I remember some mention that the program would be shelved because it had been too exposed. We guessed that it would only be hidden and called something else. Maybe it was Echelon we discussed in 2002. It later became Prism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program).

Probably a Google or DU search would find posts here on it.

Either way, nothing Snowden revealed surprised me.

[stupidicus]

10. wholly unsurprising, but good fodder for Snowden bashers

and those who silenced their alarms when a guy with a "D" by his name took the high office.

Personally I've long thought and argued that the creeping facsism in this country requires Huxlian and Orwellian tactics to achieve the strategic results big brother is strangling us with.

“We are in that brave new world, and we are capable of being in that Orwellian world, too.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/09/12/justice-sotomayor-americans-should-be-alarmed-by-spread-of-drones/

Those blindly subservient to the big "D" are obviously part of the problem, not any lasting solutions on the privacy front.

[tooeyeten]

13. There's the

Patriotism coming home to roost post 9/11.

[whereisjustice]

17. us govt. is filled with spying weasels, at least Democratic presidential front runner H... oh wait

nevermind.

[woo me with science]

19. How many threads now on the front page

about the government "threatening" someone? Threatening families of journalists, threatening holders of information about Americans? Combat vehicles at public schools? Lovefests with Kissinger?

People deserve so much better than thug corporatists and warmongers.

[City Lights]

27. We are the schoolyard bully. nt