A request made by Internet giant Yahoo to a secretive federal court could allow the Silicon Valley company to finally detail a past attempt to fend off a surveillance program it insisted was unconstitutional.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court told Yahoo in 2007
that it had to provide the government with data on the Internet
activity of users without waiting for a signed warrant, a request
that the company ignored and then unsuccessfully tried to refute.
Despite claims that providing the court with that data would
violate the constitutionally-protected privacy of its users,
though, a panel of judges assigned under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, or FISA, told Yahoo they would be required to
comply or else they would be in violation of the law.
Only this year, however, was Yahoo allowed to acknowledge the
government’s request, and even still they are barred from
discussing details of their argument, which under FISA rules are
treated as highly confidential. That could all change, however,
if a FISA court panel agrees with Yahoo’s request to go public
with their legal filings five years after the fact.
News of Yahoo’s renewed request comes courtesy of the San Jose
Mercury News, who broke the story early Thursday. Mercury
reporter Brandon Bailey called Yahoo’s request “a rare legal
move” and said, if revealed, the public will once and for all
see what efforts the Internet giant took to unsuccessfully fight
back the court’s attempt to persuade tech companies into
cooperating with a government data-gathering effort that is all
the more controversial five years later.
Although its long been known that at least one major Internet
company fought against the FISA ruling, Yahoo was only allowed to
acknowledge their role last month, an action that came just days
after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
allowed The Guardian newspaper to publish documents exposing the
government’s vast surveillance efforts. One of those files, a
NSA-authorized slideshow, showed how Yahoo, Google, AOL and other
Internet giants were compelled under federal law to let the
government go through user records without a warrant being signed
using a program called PRISM.
That disclosure attributed to Snowden and others have sparked
international outrage directed at Uncle Sam and the NSA, and has
also rekindled discussions about not just government surveillance
but also the privacy of millions of Americans. Yahoo thinks that
by being able to publish its own arguments in the
little-discussed FISA battle that they’d be able to show they
“objected strenuously” to the government’s demands, Bailey
wrote.
“If Yahoo succeeds in unsealing some of the court files, legal
experts say, it would be a historic development and an important
step toward illuminating the arguments behind the controversial
Internet surveillance program known as PRISM,” wrote Bailey.
Indeed, attorneys with both the American Civil Liberties Union
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are already lauding
Yahoo’s request.
“This is the first time we’ve seen one of these companies
making this broad an argument in favor of transparency in the
FISA court,” ACLU attorney Alex Abdo told Mercury News.
Mark Rumold, an attorney who has worked on surveillance court
issues for the EFF, added that Yahoo’s arguments, while currently
under seal, couldn’t have found a more powerful opponent in the
FISA court.
“When you get presented with an order you don’t think is
constitutional and the government says, ‘We have this secret
court opinion that it is constitutional,’ then you are pretty
much stuck,” Rumold said.
Also last month Yahoo announced that the federal government made
upwards of 13,000 requests for user data during the last six
months, although FISA rules prohibit them from detailing those
demands any further, much to the chagrin of Yahoo.
“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,” the company said in a
statement at the time.
Since Snowden began disclosing documents to the media, Yahoo,
Google and Microsoft have all asked the FISA court to reexamine
their opinion. According to the Washington Post, Google argued in
their latest FISA paperwork that “the company has a
constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to
give the government.”
Snowden is currently believed to be in stuck in a Moscow airport
hoping to eventually get asylum from one of the 20-plus countries
he’s requested assistance from. He is facing charges in the
United States under the Espionage Act.
Republished with permission from: RT