Yahoo was threatened with fines of $250,000 (€193.423) per day if it didn’t comply with broad demands to hand over users’ communications. The one putting all the pressure was none other than the US government.
The Washington Post says, “The whole situation came to light after court documents from 2008 were unsealed yesterday, shedding light on how federal agencies go about forcing US tech companies to share data for the PRISM program”.
Yahoo has revealed a while back that it had tried to fight off the NSA and other agencies that demanded data of them.It also revealed that they did’t participate willingly in the PRISM program and however succeeded with its work.
“Users come first at Yahoo. We treat public safety with the utmost seriousness, but we are also committed to protecting users’ data,” Yahoo writes, most likely happy that there’s public proof of its efforts.
News broke last June about the National Security Agency and the FBI siphoning personal data from the main computer servers of nine major U.S. Internet firms, as reported by The Post and the London-based Guardian, with documents provided by Edward Snowden.
Almost all the major US tech firms including AOL, Apple, Google and Microsoft were listed by the NSA as participants in the program, which was run in conjunction with the NSA’s British equivalent, GCHQ.
