Documents reveal U.S. threat to fine Yahoo $250,000 daily unless it turned over user data

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/11/documents-reveal-u-s-threat-to-fine-yahoo-250000-daily-unless-it-turned-over-user-data/

Documents reveal U.S. threat to fine Yahoo $250,000 daily unless it turned over user data
By Reuters
Thursday, September 11, 2014 22:30 EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The U.S. government in 2008 threatened to fine Yahoo Inc $250,000 a day if it failed to turn over customer data to intelligence agencies, according to documents unsealed on Thursday.

The documents shed new light on how the government dealt with U.S. Internet companies that were reluctant to comply with orders from the secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which rules on government requests to conduct surveillance for national security issues.

Yahoo lost the battle, which experts say helped pave the way for the Prism surveillance program revealed last summer by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“It’s always been a little bit behind the curtain as to what Internet companies do when they actually receive these requests. Now we have evidence that Yahoo did in fact fight this battle and look at considerable fines as a consequence of not disclosing the data,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.