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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

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 companies in the same position. Most your legal team probably doesn't get to know what's going on. You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt. I'm not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual's civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair.

idlewords 10y ago
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.
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  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.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    She's the CEO, she gets paid to be responsible for everything at the company. Of course she is at fault.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Knowing Stamos' background, it's possible that she was specifically required not to tell him.
  - Phlarp 10y ago
    How do you slip something like this past a corporate security team? Stamos and @bcrypt never struck me as individuals that were "asleep at the wheel". Surely there was evidence somewhere? If Stamos wasn't briefed as to the situation and a security engineer found the rootkit on their own how could they be bound by the terms of an NSL / gag order?
    - tptacek 10y ago
      I don't know any more about this than you do; I'm learning about it from the same Reuters story. But according to the story, the decision to implant the backdoor wasn't discovered by Yahoo security; rather, the backdoor itself was discovered, weeks after it was deployed.
      - Phlarp 10y ago
        So is the speculation that Stamos' departure was related to this? The timing would seem suspicious otherwise. If so, one wonders if he would take a similar principled stance a second time at Facebook. Much harder to jump ship for greener pastures while already riding the biggest rocketship in town.
        tptacek 10y ago
        I do not believe Stamos would remain at Facebook after something like this. But we're not much more than acquaintances (we both worked at NCC, and were prior to that former business rivals or whatever you call two people with similar roles at competing firms). I like him. I just want to be clear that I'm not speculating about Stamos's motives.
        deleted 10y ago
- jsprogrammer 10y ago
  Weren't high level officials communicating over Yahoo! mail? Was Yahoo given a contract, or otherwise compensated?
2AF3 10y ago
Isn't this the same as the Snowden revelations?
- toyg 10y ago
  No. This is from last year. Snowden came out in 2013.
rdl 10y ago
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 like this (and IMO clearly unconstitutional). If it's an NSL about, say, an order to specifically target UBL, you probably hang in public opinion. If it's an NSL about, say, finding Snowden, you might be ok. This is an interesting check and balance vs. government overreach. I'd be a lot more comfortable with someone going public in a live press conference in DC (maybe releasing a key to a file which is pre-distributed), than someone running off to Russia or doing it anonymously, though.
- mikestew 10y ago
  It's an experiment that I would personally be willing to try were I a high-visibility C-level exec. Been to jail, not that bad, mostly just boring; and certainly the jail that CEO me goes to would likely be better than the jail the real me has been a guest of. But the kind of person willing to tweak the nose of the government doesn't usually get to be C-anything. As you point out, best to wisely pick your battle as you'll want public opinion behind you. And remember that as popular as she is, Martha Stewart still went to jail.
  - compiler-guy 10y ago
    Chelsea Manning, who is imprisoned over something similar to this case, may have a different opinion on how nice jail is than you.
    - envy2 10y ago
      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 something they did not explicitly and voluntarily (through a contract or NDA) agree not to disclose.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brian-armstrong 10y ago
That's not true at all. They could just quit.
ryanlol 10y ago
>You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt. I don't know about that, Yahoo has a pretty big platform they could use against the government. Not that I'd really expect anyone to pick up that fight, but Yahoo is far from powerless here.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Yes. It's worth noting that the former CEO of now-defunct telco Qwest claims that he spent 4 years in prison because he refused to comply with illegal NSA demands. [0] [0] https://www.popularresistance.org/former-qwest-ceo-says-refusal-to-comply-with-nsa-spying-landed-him-in-jail/ https://www.popularresistance.org/former-qwest-ceo-says-refu...
- tedunangst 10y ago
  If only he had taken the high road and not dumped millions of dollars in stock shortly before it tanked, we wouldn't have to wonder about why he's in prison.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Yeah, that's what I said. It seems so many of these leakers or government examples would almost perfectly illustrate the point of activists if they just didn't do something incredibly illegal, naive, or debatable on top of the solid contributions. Then, we have to wonder why whatever happened to them really happened. Would the connection still be there if they just did the one or two good things? Can't prove it to skeptics. I always encourage those in the future resisting police states to make sure whatever they do is beyond doubt A Good Thing. Even Constitutionalists on pro-surveillance side should pause to reconsider their views. They won't if they think person got canned for being a traitor or running financial schemes. (sighs)
    - zzzcpan 10y ago
      > I always encourage those in the future resisting police states to make sure whatever they do is beyond doubt A Good Thing But A Good Thing would easily be destroyed by simply fabricating a case against the enemy, wouldn't it? Like rape, child porn, the usual.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        It's possible. So far, they're just using what's already there.
secfirstmd 10y ago
I don't buy this argue...Open Whisper Systems managed to not roll over and they are only less than half a dozen people...
- jonny_eh 10y ago
  Devils advocate: They have less to lose.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Advocate for reality: they don't mean shit in bigger scheme of things since virtually nobody uses them. So secret groups put less effort into them. Yahoo, Gmail, Lavabit, various IM's... all were in the Snowden leaks as SIGINT-enabled through taps, black bags, or "FBI coercion." If Whisper got that important, I think we'd see bad stuff happen to the company or Moxie. So, enjoy the added protection from nation states of low uptake if you're using it. :)
- hirsin 10y ago
  It's easy to say with confidence "These 6 people that I know well and represent are OK losing their jobs when you fine my company out of existence". It's much harder to say "I will defy you and in the process cost 10k+ people their jobs without them having any say or knowledge of this".
  - slantedview 10y ago
    > I will defy you and in the process cost 10k+ people their jobs without them having any say or knowledge of this There's no way the govt. would do anything more than skewer (or attempt to) a few sacrificial lambs for violating a gag order. There's no political win otherwise.
    - wcummings 10y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-documents-fine-user-data-refusal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws... "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." "The size of the daily fine was set to double every week that Yahoo refused to comply, the documents show." Two years ago
findK 10y ago
isn't the whole premise that the Big Companies actually control the government? "They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders." full weight? You mean like a small fine ? That's what happened to Wells Fargo. The govt . seems really angry about it, but what can they really do to a corp that is considered an entity?
- dmix 10y ago
  Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. It's so important that these leaks go public for two critical reasons: 1) with that type of financial regulatory environment for public companies, the only way to create incentives for that type of consumer protection play is when it has monetary consequences if they do nothing (customers shutting down their accounts) 2) court docs from an earlier Yahoo trial in a secret court were already released when the NSA requested a huge trove of emails and Yahoo challenged it. I read the judges ruling and the TLDR is that the judge said the customers will never know their email is being read so how can you claim that a privacy violation has occurred? The twisted logic here is that there's no damage to the customer/company as long as the intrusion is conducted in total secrecy. So that's why Yahoo is so willing to fold here. This is what they are dealing with. Side note: Imagine the same logic was applied to police a search warrant that allowed police to enter hundreds of houses, a type of warrant that could never be challenged by these homeowners defence attorneys. "They'll never know police broke into their house and went through all of their drawers and personal belongings. They'll come home the next day and everything will seem exactly. the same. So what claim to privacy violation could do they have?" The need for secrecy in FISA courts goes well beyond protecting state secrets like NSA tech. This type of judicial rationalization would never withstand scrutiny in open courts which is why total secrecy is the key.
  - cerebellum42 10y ago
    >I read the judges ruling and the TLDR is that the judge said the customers will never know their email is being read so how can you claim that a privacy violation has occurred? What?! That's like saying my home wasn't actually burgled until I arrive home to see that it was, absolutely ridiculous
ComodoHacker 10y ago
>treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair. Especially for Yahoo, given their tough financial and market situation. It was far easier For Apple and Google.
tw04 10y ago
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 billion dollars worth of contracts from the company. That example alone proved that the government can tell any narrative they want; they own the media, they'll own private companies too.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  The Joseph Nacchio story is very complicated and not the best example of the point you are making, sadly. Qwest was undeniably naughty with the books on his watch and they had a case. I agree it sucks, just saying he's not the best example.
  - washadjeffmad 10y ago
    Which isn't to say that government organizations only ask companies with unquestionably above board accounting to engage in legally dubious initiatives. Plainly, there's no reason to take a company's compliance as a sign that they 'have nothing to hide'. Likelier, it was in part because they did that they complied.
    - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      No, it just means, if you're going to dig in and take on the government make sure your house is clean. That's all it means. That applies to dealing with anyone with power, really, not just the government. I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. They had a case, and while the conclusion I was responding to is extreme, Qwest's accounting fraud ran into the billions and they had a pretty strong case that Nacchio profited from that. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree nor am I saying I don't think Nacchio is notable for taking on the feds, just that Qwest is not a good example of what happens when you do because the government had a legitimate gripe with the books.
mtgx 10y ago
If that were the case, then Apple would've caved in, too. Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. My point is it has less to do with "Yahoo being scared about being destroyed by the US government" and more with Mayer's own personal fear of the US government, and easily caving to such threats, whether it was because of her baby, because of weak character, or because she was inexperienced as CEO didn't know how to handle this. EDIT: Also Yahoo's response to the story is such bullshit: > “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.” What's the law you're abiding with that says you need to implement such a backdoor? Name it. Even the FBI named the law or laws it thought would help it force Apple to put a backdoor in its phones. So if Yahoo can't even name the law, then that law or the gag order saying they can't name it are unconstitutional. Period. It also proves once again how easily Yahoo caved.
- pascalmemories 10y ago
  > Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive. But your comment positively reeks of misogyny. Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny. If your comment doesn't stand without it, I believe deleting it would add to rather than subtract from, the discussion.
  - skue 10y ago
    > > Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. > OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive. But your comment positively reeks of misogyny. Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny. Having newborn twins at home could certainly be a factor in any CEO's willingness to make an ideological stand in the face of jail time, regardless of the CEO's gender. Plus there's a wealth of feminist writing about the potential for gender disagreement when it comes to this very question, going back to Kohlberg, Gilligan, and an imaginary guy named Heinz.[1] FWIW, I do agree that any privileged group should be conscientious when discussing others who might sometimes feel like or be seen as outsiders, and that this applies to guys in tech. But your comment seems a bit over the top and risks shutting down discussion about an important topic... whether the government took advantage of the fact that Mayer had newborns at home when they pressured her to comply. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages...
lkmldkmflgm 10y ago
> I'm not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual's civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair. Actually you are giving them a pass because your comment contains nothing but apologetics for these companies. Whether their decision to spy on their customers and invade their privacy was easy is irrelevant and all of your apologetics are worthless speculations based on nothing whatsoever.
- DubiousPusher 10y ago
  I'm not saying they made the right decision. I'm saying that people treating this as if it were an easy place to be are likely over simplifying the situation.
  - lkmldkmflgm 10y ago
    > I'm not saying they made the right decision. You're also not saying they made the wrong decision. > I'm saying that people treating this as if it were an easy place to be are likely over simplifying the situation. Nobody is treating it as if it were an easy place to be because nobody gives a shit. It's irrelevant to whether what they did was right or wrong.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
I agree. I'll go further to hold the U.S. citizens responsible for the apathy in dealing with rampant deceit and abuses of power by intelligence companies. One set of those were what led up to secret courts, mass surveillances, etc. Any number of leaks showing they were full of crap wasn't enough for citizens to take action. They took action on many inconsequential matters, though. So, if citizens continuously allow or even create (surveillance supporters) a police state, then the companies operating in it are under no ethical obligation to take risk to protect them from that police state's activities. Those companies would actually be putting in more effort and taking more risk than most of the citizens themselves. That's an unreasonable expectation. U.S. citizens need to get their shit straight in this country. Interestingly, the vast majority are pushing for the two most corrupt candidates imaginable for this election who have each mocked the Constitution and support the police state apparatus. Trying to protect them is a lost cause. Better to invest that effort into a different democracy whose people actually give a shit vs this one.
euxneks 10y ago
See, the thing is, if the company had a way to encrypt all communications so that they couldn't read it, they wouldn't be in this position :\
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  With SAAS, a server-side code tweak could resurrect surveillance capabilities.
Spooky23 10y ago
Public companies have no real ethical consideration other than the warped perception of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Some companies may be managed by good people, but people are ephemeral, tomorrow anything can happen. You have to criticize and a spew abuse at these companies, whether or not they are secretly resisting these orders, because their resistance is secret. Only by damaging entities responsible for implementing government policy can you affect change.
aswanson 10y ago
I used to work for a govt contractor. The only chance freedom has is for people to say shit like this to signal some of the bs I witnessed under those circumstances. Nuff said.
DominikR 10y ago
Very few people would put the blame mainly on companies like Yahoo or Google as they are forced by their government to do this. But it still makes using their services dangerous to you and your company or the company you are working for. I would even go so far and require any politician running for any office to not have used any foreign email, messenger or social network in the last X years except for reaching out to voters. There's a high risk that they could be blackmailed with their private communication being in the hands of foreign governments and I don't want compromised people like that anywhere near public office.
yAnonymous 10y ago
>You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt. 1. Report the letter stolen. 2. Publish it anonymously from a public hotspot with a throwaway phone. It's not even particularly risky.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
I know you are not supporting the companies here. But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when you ask for it back, they say: "Well, there was an unexpected event in some sector of the economy which happened behind the scenes which we cannot tell you about. However, what we can tell you is that we were sufficiently pressurized by the government that it was for the good of the entire economy to not give money back to the depositors. Also, you should know that we didn't take this decision lightly but spent many many hours agonizing over it. Please come back in a year. And you might have to take a little haircut on your money as well." Would you say, "Oh, I didn't realize you gave it so much thought. Besides, its all for the good of the economy. Tell you what, why don't you just keep the money?" Does the fact that the decision was actually genuinely hard, or even possibly justifiable in some sense, make you any less likely to get mad? Your justification of the hardness of the decision is a poor excuse, because many of these companies are trustees of a lot of money from the public who have some expectations about how their data should be managed and secured (not explicitly, sure. But they wouldn't agree to random strangers searching through their email if told beforehand, either). To borrow a cliche, great power comes with great responsibility. In the field of software unfortunately the only thing which comes with great power is a tendency to turn a blind eye and simply try and acquire even more power.
- DubiousPusher 10y ago
  I have no objection to anger or even conclusions that the CEO made the wrong decision. My objection was entirely to how the first commenters in this topic treated the situation as obvious and the CEO as the clear moral antagonist of this story. One of my life mottos is seek first to understand. Another is that very few things in life are as simple as they appear. I will forever object to vilification and simplification.
tripzilch 10y ago
They're US corporations. They literally run the country. They definitely have a lot more power than the little voter people. Does anyone ever take responsibility for anything they do over there?

idlewords 10y ago

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.

lawnchair_larry 10y ago
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.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  She's the CEO, she gets paid to be responsible for everything at the company. Of course she is at fault.
tptacek 10y ago
Knowing Stamos' background, it's possible that she was specifically required not to tell him.
- Phlarp 10y ago
  How do you slip something like this past a corporate security team? Stamos and @bcrypt never struck me as individuals that were "asleep at the wheel". Surely there was evidence somewhere? If Stamos wasn't briefed as to the situation and a security engineer found the rootkit on their own how could they be bound by the terms of an NSL / gag order?
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I don't know any more about this than you do; I'm learning about it from the same Reuters story. But according to the story, the decision to implant the backdoor wasn't discovered by Yahoo security; rather, the backdoor itself was discovered, weeks after it was deployed.
    - Phlarp 10y ago
      So is the speculation that Stamos' departure was related to this? The timing would seem suspicious otherwise. If so, one wonders if he would take a similar principled stance a second time at Facebook. Much harder to jump ship for greener pastures while already riding the biggest rocketship in town.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        I do not believe Stamos would remain at Facebook after something like this. But we're not much more than acquaintances (we both worked at NCC, and were prior to that former business rivals or whatever you call two people with similar roles at competing firms). I like him. I just want to be clear that I'm not speculating about Stamos's motives.
        deleted 10y ago
jsprogrammer 10y ago
Weren't high level officials communicating over Yahoo! mail? Was Yahoo given a contract, or otherwise compensated?

2AF3 10y ago

Isn't this the same as the Snowden revelations?

toyg 10y ago
No. This is from last year. Snowden came out in 2013.

rdl 10y ago

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 like this (and IMO clearly unconstitutional). If it's an NSL about, say, an order to specifically target UBL, you probably hang in public opinion. If it's an NSL about, say, finding Snowden, you might be ok. This is an interesting check and balance vs. government overreach. I'd be a lot more comfortable with someone going public in a live press conference in DC (maybe releasing a key to a file which is pre-distributed), than someone running off to Russia or doing it anonymously, though.

mikestew 10y ago
It's an experiment that I would personally be willing to try were I a high-visibility C-level exec. Been to jail, not that bad, mostly just boring; and certainly the jail that CEO me goes to would likely be better than the jail the real me has been a guest of. But the kind of person willing to tweak the nose of the government doesn't usually get to be C-anything. As you point out, best to wisely pick your battle as you'll want public opinion behind you. And remember that as popular as she is, Martha Stewart still went to jail.
- compiler-guy 10y ago
  Chelsea Manning, who is imprisoned over something similar to this case, may have a different opinion on how nice jail is than you.
  - envy2 10y ago
    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 something they did not explicitly and voluntarily (through a contract or NDA) agree not to disclose.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

brian-armstrong 10y ago

That's not true at all. They could just quit.

ryanlol 10y ago

>You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt. I don't know about that, Yahoo has a pretty big platform they could use against the government. Not that I'd really expect anyone to pick up that fight, but Yahoo is far from powerless here.

cookiecaper 10y ago

Yes. It's worth noting that the former CEO of now-defunct telco Qwest claims that he spent 4 years in prison because he refused to comply with illegal NSA demands. [0] [0] https://www.popularresistance.org/former-qwest-ceo-says-refusal-to-comply-with-nsa-spying-landed-him-in-jail/ https://www.popularresistance.org/former-qwest-ceo-says-refu...

tedunangst 10y ago
If only he had taken the high road and not dumped millions of dollars in stock shortly before it tanked, we wouldn't have to wonder about why he's in prison.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Yeah, that's what I said. It seems so many of these leakers or government examples would almost perfectly illustrate the point of activists if they just didn't do something incredibly illegal, naive, or debatable on top of the solid contributions. Then, we have to wonder why whatever happened to them really happened. Would the connection still be there if they just did the one or two good things? Can't prove it to skeptics. I always encourage those in the future resisting police states to make sure whatever they do is beyond doubt A Good Thing. Even Constitutionalists on pro-surveillance side should pause to reconsider their views. They won't if they think person got canned for being a traitor or running financial schemes. (sighs)
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    > I always encourage those in the future resisting police states to make sure whatever they do is beyond doubt A Good Thing But A Good Thing would easily be destroyed by simply fabricating a case against the enemy, wouldn't it? Like rape, child porn, the usual.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      It's possible. So far, they're just using what's already there.

secfirstmd 10y ago

I don't buy this argue...Open Whisper Systems managed to not roll over and they are only less than half a dozen people...

jonny_eh 10y ago
Devils advocate: They have less to lose.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Advocate for reality: they don't mean shit in bigger scheme of things since virtually nobody uses them. So secret groups put less effort into them. Yahoo, Gmail, Lavabit, various IM's... all were in the Snowden leaks as SIGINT-enabled through taps, black bags, or "FBI coercion." If Whisper got that important, I think we'd see bad stuff happen to the company or Moxie. So, enjoy the added protection from nation states of low uptake if you're using it. :)
hirsin 10y ago
It's easy to say with confidence "These 6 people that I know well and represent are OK losing their jobs when you fine my company out of existence". It's much harder to say "I will defy you and in the process cost 10k+ people their jobs without them having any say or knowledge of this".
- slantedview 10y ago
  > I will defy you and in the process cost 10k+ people their jobs without them having any say or knowledge of this There's no way the govt. would do anything more than skewer (or attempt to) a few sacrificial lambs for violating a gag order. There's no political win otherwise.
  - wcummings 10y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-documents-fine-user-data-refusal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-laws... "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." "The size of the daily fine was set to double every week that Yahoo refused to comply, the documents show." Two years ago

findK 10y ago

isn't the whole premise that the Big Companies actually control the government? "They threaten the full weight of the US government's wraith and then tie every order up with classifications and gag orders." full weight? You mean like a small fine ? That's what happened to Wells Fargo. The govt . seems really angry about it, but what can they really do to a corp that is considered an entity?

dmix 10y ago
Maximizing shareholder value is like a death grip that squeezes any public corporation into not making financial gambles on ethical grounds. It's so important that these leaks go public for two critical reasons: 1) with that type of financial regulatory environment for public companies, the only way to create incentives for that type of consumer protection play is when it has monetary consequences if they do nothing (customers shutting down their accounts) 2) court docs from an earlier Yahoo trial in a secret court were already released when the NSA requested a huge trove of emails and Yahoo challenged it. I read the judges ruling and the TLDR is that the judge said the customers will never know their email is being read so how can you claim that a privacy violation has occurred? The twisted logic here is that there's no damage to the customer/company as long as the intrusion is conducted in total secrecy. So that's why Yahoo is so willing to fold here. This is what they are dealing with. Side note: Imagine the same logic was applied to police a search warrant that allowed police to enter hundreds of houses, a type of warrant that could never be challenged by these homeowners defence attorneys. "They'll never know police broke into their house and went through all of their drawers and personal belongings. They'll come home the next day and everything will seem exactly. the same. So what claim to privacy violation could do they have?" The need for secrecy in FISA courts goes well beyond protecting state secrets like NSA tech. This type of judicial rationalization would never withstand scrutiny in open courts which is why total secrecy is the key.
- cerebellum42 10y ago
  >I read the judges ruling and the TLDR is that the judge said the customers will never know their email is being read so how can you claim that a privacy violation has occurred? What?! That's like saying my home wasn't actually burgled until I arrive home to see that it was, absolutely ridiculous

ComodoHacker 10y ago

>treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair. Especially for Yahoo, given their tough financial and market situation. It was far easier For Apple and Google.

tw04 10y ago

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 billion dollars worth of contracts from the company. That example alone proved that the government can tell any narrative they want; they own the media, they'll own private companies too.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
The Joseph Nacchio story is very complicated and not the best example of the point you are making, sadly. Qwest was undeniably naughty with the books on his watch and they had a case. I agree it sucks, just saying he's not the best example.
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  Which isn't to say that government organizations only ask companies with unquestionably above board accounting to engage in legally dubious initiatives. Plainly, there's no reason to take a company's compliance as a sign that they 'have nothing to hide'. Likelier, it was in part because they did that they complied.
  - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
    No, it just means, if you're going to dig in and take on the government make sure your house is clean. That's all it means. That applies to dealing with anyone with power, really, not just the government. I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. They had a case, and while the conclusion I was responding to is extreme, Qwest's accounting fraud ran into the billions and they had a pretty strong case that Nacchio profited from that. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree nor am I saying I don't think Nacchio is notable for taking on the feds, just that Qwest is not a good example of what happens when you do because the government had a legitimate gripe with the books.

mtgx 10y ago

If that were the case, then Apple would've caved in, too. Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. My point is it has less to do with "Yahoo being scared about being destroyed by the US government" and more with Mayer's own personal fear of the US government, and easily caving to such threats, whether it was because of her baby, because of weak character, or because she was inexperienced as CEO didn't know how to handle this. EDIT: Also Yahoo's response to the story is such bullshit: > “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.” What's the law you're abiding with that says you need to implement such a backdoor? Name it. Even the FBI named the law or laws it thought would help it force Apple to put a backdoor in its phones. So if Yahoo can't even name the law, then that law or the gag order saying they can't name it are unconstitutional. Period. It also proves once again how easily Yahoo caved.

pascalmemories 10y ago
> Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive. But your comment positively reeks of misogyny. Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny. If your comment doesn't stand without it, I believe deleting it would add to rather than subtract from, the discussion.
- skue 10y ago
  > > Mayer was probably too new and too scared to deal with this, especially when she had to think about her new baby. > OK, I normally think misogyny claims are over-blown and people are way too sensitive. But your comment positively reeks of misogyny. Rather than go for a down-vote, because you're able to edit your comment, I think you should reconsider the phrasing and delete the misogyny. Having newborn twins at home could certainly be a factor in any CEO's willingness to make an ideological stand in the face of jail time, regardless of the CEO's gender. Plus there's a wealth of feminist writing about the potential for gender disagreement when it comes to this very question, going back to Kohlberg, Gilligan, and an imaginary guy named Heinz.[1] FWIW, I do agree that any privileged group should be conscientious when discussing others who might sometimes feel like or be seen as outsiders, and that this applies to guys in tech. But your comment seems a bit over the top and risks shutting down discussion about an important topic... whether the government took advantage of the fact that Mayer had newborns at home when they pressured her to comply. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages...

lkmldkmflgm 10y ago

> I'm not giving these companies a complete pass for being complicit in the erosion of individual's civil liberties but treating this as if the decision is easy is vastly unfair. Actually you are giving them a pass because your comment contains nothing but apologetics for these companies. Whether their decision to spy on their customers and invade their privacy was easy is irrelevant and all of your apologetics are worthless speculations based on nothing whatsoever.

DubiousPusher 10y ago
I'm not saying they made the right decision. I'm saying that people treating this as if it were an easy place to be are likely over simplifying the situation.
- lkmldkmflgm 10y ago
  > I'm not saying they made the right decision. You're also not saying they made the wrong decision. > I'm saying that people treating this as if it were an easy place to be are likely over simplifying the situation. Nobody is treating it as if it were an easy place to be because nobody gives a shit. It's irrelevant to whether what they did was right or wrong.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

I agree. I'll go further to hold the U.S. citizens responsible for the apathy in dealing with rampant deceit and abuses of power by intelligence companies. One set of those were what led up to secret courts, mass surveillances, etc. Any number of leaks showing they were full of crap wasn't enough for citizens to take action. They took action on many inconsequential matters, though. So, if citizens continuously allow or even create (surveillance supporters) a police state, then the companies operating in it are under no ethical obligation to take risk to protect them from that police state's activities. Those companies would actually be putting in more effort and taking more risk than most of the citizens themselves. That's an unreasonable expectation. U.S. citizens need to get their shit straight in this country. Interestingly, the vast majority are pushing for the two most corrupt candidates imaginable for this election who have each mocked the Constitution and support the police state apparatus. Trying to protect them is a lost cause. Better to invest that effort into a different democracy whose people actually give a shit vs this one.

euxneks 10y ago

See, the thing is, if the company had a way to encrypt all communications so that they couldn't read it, they wouldn't be in this position :\

dredmorbius 10y ago
With SAAS, a server-side code tweak could resurrect surveillance capabilities.

Spooky23 10y ago

Public companies have no real ethical consideration other than the warped perception of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Some companies may be managed by good people, but people are ephemeral, tomorrow anything can happen. You have to criticize and a spew abuse at these companies, whether or not they are secretly resisting these orders, because their resistance is secret. Only by damaging entities responsible for implementing government policy can you affect change.

aswanson 10y ago

I used to work for a govt contractor. The only chance freedom has is for people to say shit like this to signal some of the bs I witnessed under those circumstances. Nuff said.

DominikR 10y ago

Very few people would put the blame mainly on companies like Yahoo or Google as they are forced by their government to do this. But it still makes using their services dangerous to you and your company or the company you are working for. I would even go so far and require any politician running for any office to not have used any foreign email, messenger or social network in the last X years except for reaching out to voters. There's a high risk that they could be blackmailed with their private communication being in the hands of foreign governments and I don't want compromised people like that anywhere near public office.

yAnonymous 10y ago

>You can't take your case to the public without being held in contempt. 1. Report the letter stolen. 2. Publish it anonymously from a public hotspot with a throwaway phone. It's not even particularly risky.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

I know you are not supporting the companies here. But let us just do a thought experiment. Suppose your bank suddenly locks up your money tomorrow, and when you ask for it back, they say: "Well, there was an unexpected event in some sector of the economy which happened behind the scenes which we cannot tell you about. However, what we can tell you is that we were sufficiently pressurized by the government that it was for the good of the entire economy to not give money back to the depositors. Also, you should know that we didn't take this decision lightly but spent many many hours agonizing over it. Please come back in a year. And you might have to take a little haircut on your money as well." Would you say, "Oh, I didn't realize you gave it so much thought. Besides, its all for the good of the economy. Tell you what, why don't you just keep the money?" Does the fact that the decision was actually genuinely hard, or even possibly justifiable in some sense, make you any less likely to get mad? Your justification of the hardness of the decision is a poor excuse, because many of these companies are trustees of a lot of money from the public who have some expectations about how their data should be managed and secured (not explicitly, sure. But they wouldn't agree to random strangers searching through their email if told beforehand, either). To borrow a cliche, great power comes with great responsibility. In the field of software unfortunately the only thing which comes with great power is a tendency to turn a blind eye and simply try and acquire even more power.

DubiousPusher 10y ago
I have no objection to anger or even conclusions that the CEO made the wrong decision. My objection was entirely to how the first commenters in this topic treated the situation as obvious and the CEO as the clear moral antagonist of this story. One of my life mottos is seek first to understand. Another is that very few things in life are as simple as they appear. I will forever object to vilification and simplification.

tripzilch 10y ago

They're US corporations. They literally run the country. They definitely have a lot more power than the little voter people. Does anyone ever take responsibility for anything they do over there?