Yahoo Court Document To Be Declassified Showing FISA Opposition
The PRISM news may have slowed in recent weeks, but the backlash against companies who were accussed of giving the government unmitigated access to their users' data hasn't, and these companies are responding to clear their names. Yahoo! is one such company, and it has recently received a victory in court, with a ruling being issued that will declassify a document showing that it fought against FISA orders.
PRISM, of course, is the name of the program leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, in which it was claimed that major US companies – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others – had given the government direct access to its servers, allowing it to grab users' data at will. The companies all spoke out against this, stating that such was not the case and that no direct access to information was given.
Yahoo took issue with this, and petitioned for a declassification of legal documents that will prove it fought against the FISA orders on behalf of its users, something that was granted today. Under the order, the Department of Justice is required to make available documents filed in 2008, which Yahoo says contains information proving its innocence and battle to keep information private.
The order came from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, more commonly called FISA, and was then signed by the FISC. Said the ruling: "The Government shall conduct a declassification review of this Court's Memorandum Opinion of [the Yahoo case] and the legal briefs submitted by the parties to this Court." We'll know within the next two weeks how long this declassification process will take.
Shortly after the PRISM accusations had surfaced, Yahoo! denied the claims, and later went on to petition for the right to reveal more detailed data request numbers, something it was granted with fairly substantial limitations. According to the report, the company received between 12,000 and 13,000 law enforcement data requested in last half of 2012.
SOURCE: Daily Dot