U.S. threatened Yahoo with huge fine over surveillance

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.

We have evidence that Yahoo did in fact fight this battle and look at considerable fines as a consequence of not disclosing the data.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center

Earlier this year, Facebook Inc, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google Inc began publishing details about the number of secret government requests for data they receive, hoping to show their limited involvement in controversial U.S. surveillance efforts. U.S. Internet companies want to disclose as much as they can about the little-known procedure through which federal agencies request their user data in secret courts, in part because of worries about the impact on their business. On Thursday, Yahoo said it would begin to make public some 1,500 previously classified pages documenting a lengthy tussle with the government. Privacy advocates said the release of the Yahoo documents, even in their heavily redacted form, provided important information about the controversial surveillance practices.

It tells us how very serious the Bush administration was about trying to get the Internet firms to turn over this data.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center

Americas