Yahoo Adapted Email-Scanning Spam Filter to Satisfy 'Secret Court Order' Related to Terrorist Hunt

[skids929]

I'll bet you $1000 you broke at least one law today.

In any case, what other constitutional rights would you like to relinquish? You trust our government so you don't need that first amendment; just look at what some of those terrorists are doing with their right to free speech anyway. Law enforcement has your back with these scumbags, saving lives and all; you don't need that second amendment to protect yourself (just think of what the scumbags may do with those weapons anyway). Have to help our boys out in this war on terrorism, may as well house a few should they ask - bye bye third. You've already done away with the fourth. You haven't done anything wrong so no reason not to answer any question asked of you, too-da-loo fifth. All of this unwarranted searching and compelled testimony is never going to result in charges since you've "nothing to hide" so who needs speedy trials - if they ever lock you up you'll wait (gitmo was getting to be a problem anyway). When you do get to trial the judge is obviously fair and impartial, no need for a jury. During that long wait for trial a comfy cell will do just fine, why keep bail reasonable. We're already tossing out specific enumerated rights so who cares about natural rights, out with the ninth. Given how difficult basic concepts of being secure in one's person and possessions are I imagine the idea of federalism is well beyond your grasp so there's no need for the tenth.

I personally have nothing to hide either but I value our rights and am not so quick to voluntarily give them away. You want to talk about lives, think of the lives that were given to secure those rights initially and defend them over this country's history. Respect those lives.

Rationalize much? Whats sad is the level of assumption in every word you probably spent considerable time in thinking of and typing. How about assuming positive intent before you assume someone doesn't respect their rights and the lives sacrificed.

And I broke zero laws today, ZERO. I worked my ass off though, and put my 3 children to bed that someday I have to send out into this crappy world, and be prepared to deal with people like you.

 

[thisisnotmyname]

Rationalize much?

That's ironic given your post.

Whats sad is the level of assumption in every word you probably spent considerable time in thinking of and typing. How about assuming positive intent before you assume someone doesn't respect their rights and the lives sacrificed.

Positive intent of "I have nothing to hide so it's fine if the fourth amendment is thrown away?" In any case, I both think and type quickly but to ease any further concern you may have for my time I'll just go cliche...

"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin

(it should be noted that although this quote is typically used in this context the original source was actually quite different, anyone interested in the actual history can read the The Reply to the Governor presumed to have been written by Franklin, it's fairly dry reading though)

And I broke zero laws today, ZERO. I worked my ass off though, and put my 3 children to bed that someday I have to send out into this crappy world, and be prepared to deal with people like you.

I'm still willing to make the bet. You are almost guaranteed to break a law almost every day. From the minor driving offenses that many people seem to think are of little consequence (going down hill did you exceed the speed limit by a couple miles an hour, did you not come to a COMPLETE stop at any stop sign, buckle your seatbelt as you started to pull out of the parking spot rather than before putting the car in gear, read that text message at a stoplight?) or the thousands of federal laws with criminal penalties, the hundreds of thousands of regulatory laws with criminal penalties, then we get into state laws, local ordinances, civil law, etc... Did you play any unlicensed music while at work? Did you swear in the state of Mississippi? Did you frighten a seal in California? Did you remove a rock or pinecone from a national park? Connect to unsecured WiFi without explicit permission in advance? There are tens of thousands of ways to violate laws that you aren't even aware of. You didn't murder, rape, or rob anyone today but I'll put up my $1000 against yours that you went afoul of at least one law.

Unfortunately for you, although I'm 99% sure you broke another law anyway, if you accept my wager you would automatically lose.

 

[MacBH928]

Yahoo is one of the saddest stories in American business history

 

[MH01]

I'm certain that before this surfaced , had you asked a yahoo spokesperson about such a request, their answer would have been just like MS , google, apple etc.... hell no.

Yahoo is having a bad run recently, lucky for them Samsung has taken some of the tech media attention recently

 

[flyinmac]

Cool. They can scan all the spam I send their way. Every time a website asks for an email address, I give them a yahoo email I never use or check.

 

[Thunderhawks]

Everyone should just assume that they(google, apple, msft, etc) are all doing the same thing, just not actually disclosing they are all cooperating for better or worse.

Besides them all doing something for the government, other industries spy for the government as well.

For example the banking industry.

I had to wire money to Israel for a product called ACTIVAR. It turned out that words with ACTIVE or parts of ACTIVE were flagged in international money wiring, assuming the money would go to terrorists.

So, I had to provide additional information to unblock the money transfer.

As always unfortunately the crooks will be one step ahead of anybody, because they do not have to follow any rules.

 

[iShater]

I am already in the process of removing any old links to my Yahoo account. Was too lazy in the past, but two news out of Yahoo in the past two weeks is already too much.

 

[vladi]

it's disingenuous for Google, or any company, to say that they would say "no way" to such an order. that's not how FISA works! Compliance is mandatory. It's the government's cover for doing anything illegal and unconstitutional that they please.

Exactly! That's why I never even care what they have to say in their defense. If their service is based in US and don't comply they go the way of Lavabit, Apple included.

People have a hard time distinguishing between surveillance and data collection. They believe this is part of some surveillance program while in reality this is your typical data collection which could be branched into various profiling whenever they need it. And you think government is your problem when in reality its your webemail provider that's a bigger threat to you. If you are working on a project that could be interesting to Google and you use your gmail, even gmail for business, you can bet they have already one upped you. People don't think about this and I have seen many startups making the same mistake over and over again. I just had some home automation guys who shared their source code via gmail and stored their stuff on gdrive. They were all about minimal latency automation and I told them, if their approach is better than what Google has right now consider yourselves already screwed.