
U.S. pressed to disclose secret court's order on Yahoo email search - mikecarlton
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-order-idUSKCN12800D
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wnoise
> Intelligence officials told Reuters that all Yahoo had to do was modify
> existing systems for stopping child pornography from being sent through its
> email

It's such a convenient wedge for getting the technical capabilities and laws
in place, isn't it?

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dandelion_lover
Along with the other three Horsemen of the Infocalypse.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse)

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throw2016
Secret courts, secret processes and secret orders are very problematic. They
leave the individual or group with no recourse to the rule of law. Essentially
one single order by the FISA court 'can' suspend all your democratic rights.
Without recourse. Without limits.

Given the FISA court cannot be challenged and you can't even speak about it,
this is similar to the dehumanizing helplessness one would feel in a
totalitarian state.

The FISA court is basically a rubber stamp. The hundred percent approval rate
puts it in the company of kangaroo courts seen in the most dubious regimes.

We need to hold ourselves accountable to the minimum basic values we loudly
professes. Or there will be no credibility to call for springs or draw
attention to democratic deficiencies around the world.

There are serious inconsistencies that are now impossible to brush aside.
Without serious pushback this destructive pattern of executive behavior is not
going to stop.

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bostik
Well this is an interesting detail: _The court-ordered search Yahoo conducted,
on the other hand, was done by a module attached to the Linux kernel - in
other words, it was deeply buried near the core of the email server operating
system, far below where mail sorting was handled_

In other words, a lot of effort was spent to hide the very existence of the
code. Injected into systems in a stage far from the intended scope, and made
to persist across upper level application rewrites.

No wonder their security team freaked out when they discovered it.

~~~
sschueller
Could putting such a thing in the Linux core not also open vulnerabilities
which a Hacker such as the "state sponsored" one could have used to steal
yahoo's user data?

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wodencafe
>secret court directing Yahoo to scan all its users' incoming email...

>it appeared to involve new interpretations of at least two important legal
issues.

>order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret tribunal...

Very sketchy. Shades of Lavabit / Snowden

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cscurmudgeon
I am going to bet that it was more than just Yahoo. Google was definitely on
it too.

Yahoo is just being forced to reveal now it due to the Verizon deal.

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matt4077
Assuming the worst is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It destroys any incentives
these companies may have not to cooperate.

~~~
nv-vn
They shouldn't need any incentives. They should be led by morally upright
people who fight for the right cause and protect their customers.

~~~
nickff
Many of these companies did stand up to the government, but were forced into
line through a secret set of courts, laws, and administrative procedures. This
leaves aside all the undocumented pressures which the government has applied
in order to achieve their desired objectives; we know these sorts of tactics
are used because many government officials freely admit that they avoid e-mail
(and it's not because they're illiterate). There is only so much that
individuals can do to oppose the government, especially when the policies are
popular.

