Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Ron Bell, General Counsel, have issued the following statement, verbatim:
We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it.
To that end, we are disclosing the total number of requests for user data that law enforcement agencies in the U.S. made to us between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. During that time period, we received between 12,000 and 13,000 requests, inclusive of criminal, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and other requests. The most common of these requests concerned fraud, homicides, kidnappings, and other criminal investigations.
Like all companies, Yahoo! cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue.
Democracy demands accountability. Recognizing the important role that Yahoo! can play in ensuring accountability, we will issue later this summer our first global law enforcement transparency report, which will cover the first half of the year. We will refresh this report with current statistics twice a year.
As always, we will continually evaluate whether further actions can be taken to protect the privacy of our users and our ability to defend it. We appreciate—and do not take for granted—the trust you place in us.
Source: Yahoo
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Related articles:
Apple: Since December 2012, we have received U.S. gov’t requests for customer data for up to 10,000 accounts – June 17, 2013
Nine companies, including Apple, tied to PRISM, Obama to be smacked with class-action lawsuit – June 12, 2013
U.S. lawmakers urge review of ‘Prism’ domestic spying, Patriot Act – June 10, 2013
PRISM: Do Apple, Google, Facebook have an ethical obligation not to spy on users? – June 8, 2013
Plausible deniability: The strange and unbelievable similarities in the Apple, Google, and Facebook PRISM denials – June 7, 2013
Google’s Larry Page on government eavesdropping: ‘We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday’ – June 7, 2013
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Obama administration defends PRISM data-collection as legal anti-terrorism tool – June 7, 2013
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Report: Intelligence program gives U.S. government direct access to customer data on Apple servers; Apple denies – June 6, 2013
This poor country, The United States of America, is broken, but it can be fixed with the right people. People like this man, my new hero, Louisiana Senator Elbert Guillory:
Beautiful CEO Mayer, Can you email me your GLETR? It should be easy for you as I have an email account with your company.
On a crass note….That lovely red ball you sit on has no idea how lucky it is! 🙂
If you add up all the requests from all the companies it sure seems like broad invasion on privacy. Too bad so many people have become inept
So it seems in the last 5 months or so, Facebook has had 11,000 requests and Yahoo! has had 13,000 requests, yet the President is claiming that it’s Bush’s fault.
I would love to know how many requests have been made prior to these last five months, as it seems there have been a vast up-tick in gathering private info. Couple that with IRS persecution of groups critical to the President and spying on reporters and it seems we have a pattern of strange, Nixon-like behavior.
They should resist.