Yahoo agreed to FBI/NSA order to search all email traffic

[Skybird]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ya...-idUSKCN1241YT

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.


The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.


Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

I say you can take it for granted that Google, Microsoft and others do the same.

US laws by now are such, as I see it, that American companies cannot avoid to fully obey demands by the intel and security apparatus. Which makes such companies extended arms of the US intel network.

I would not be surprised to learn one day that the aggressiveness by which Micorsoft tries to enforce access to W7 and W8 systems in order to install W10 - which opens tremendous spying and security breaches on such platforms that the user can no longer fully counter - is due to secret orders by the NSA as well. It is a confirmed and even announced policy that the NSA wants to have access to EVERY single computer unit on this planet. That thexy hardfcode backdoors into hardware drivers stored on RAM modules or enforce backdoors in operation systems, then is just a logical step. That W7 also got reverse-installed W10 snoopware technology and profiling software installed via regular Windows Updates, matches this.

"Store it in the cloud", eh? Not even over my cold dead body, darling. Companies and users doing that, are so stupid and naive that they almost deserve to get hit by something malicious.

Recent tests thy ran over here of email services, have devastated all American-based services, with GMX leading the list of shame. All American services failed even most elemental security procedures. No doubt that European altenrtaives are under attack by the NSA, but at least legally they do not fall under US jurisdiction. The mnost popular email service on the planet, is GMX. It is also the most unsafe and compromised one. I have told all my remaining former email contacts running over GMX that I refuse to accept or reply to email accounts of theirs that are based in America.

I know people in overseas, who have to be concerned about their safety and anonymity, who even refuse to communicate over encrypted email clients and via TOR. TOR most likely has been hacked, and it is too dangerous to trust on it any longer if your safety or life depends on it.

If for any reason you have sensitive data to store, or need to communicate but need to be concerned for safety, stay away from electronics. Internet, computers, cellphones - its all a big No-Go. Stay physically disconnected. Not software-controlled and software-blocked - but PHYSICALLY DISCONNECTED. No wire and no electromagnetic wave transmitter.

Thanks to modern computer capacities and automatization you must assume, always, that EVERY communication over phone, wire, internet, gets listened into, gets automatically scanned and filted and searched for for triggers, gets recorded, stored and saved forever.

The last thing should really worry you.

Laws are meaningless here.

[Betonov]

I'm so inclined to send an email ''that party was the BOMB, like a JIHAD on alchohol. Hooked up with some girl named COMMIE, or was it Connie. The drinking really got into high gear when we were SNOWDEN it''

And put some midget gay porn in the attachment labeled ''white house floor plan''


If you can't beat them, troll them.

[Jimbuna]

^They got Bin Laden in the middle of the night so you might want to practice sleeping with one eye open

[Catfish]

^ as said before, when it comes to "defending" "peace", and "fighting terrorism", there is no law. But then it is all for your own good, says BB.

[Rockstar]

I know google is the official email service provider for the U.S. department of interior not sure about other departments or organizations.

I dont use email much for anything these days other than to have an address for internet shopping orders. If I do send personal correspondence its via proton mail. Even so who knows for sure if they're all what they claim to be.

[Oberon]

It's the only way to get those pesky Muslims, got to watch them all like hawks, and anyone who might be near them, and anyone near them.

[Rockstar]

Its not just pesky individuals and groups from the religion of peace.

The U.S. government and I'd bet every government, has always attempted to regulate and listen in on radio television communications of its people. Back in the day off shore stations were I think pretty easy to pin point and only a handful of the population had the equipment to instantly express ideas with someone in Germany, Slovenia or the U.K. But with the advent of the world wide web every thing has changed. Almost everyone has instant access to somone on the otherside of the world. If you ask me subversive individuals and groups have taken advantage of this a long time ago. Governments on the otherhand are playing catch-up to the times and need to work with private companies to do what they did before the internet.

Its nothing new, if we dont like it then just unplug. But we need to realize that there are people and groups out there who wish to do us harm and take away what we have.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's the only way to get those pesky Muslims, got to watch them all like hawks, and anyone who might be near them, and anyone near them.

From you, this sounds somehow.. wrong
Also, there are so much muslims in the world (far more than christians) that they have to plaster the USA with NSA eavesdropping facilities, to keep up with the chatter.
They have algorythms for that though, and you can now be killed just based on your metadata.
General Michael Hayden, a former director of both the CIA and the NSA, said this: “We kill people based on metadata”
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...rones-pakistan
At least outside of the US. But they work on that, too.

Listening is necessary of course, however how often has this really worked, in the past?
On one hand the secret services can tell "not more attacks because we listened", but on the other hand you can also say "why didn't that work in the past, regarding all what happened ?"
We have no real intel about whether they really prevented anything, and what of it can be related to eavesdropping, if at all.

Of course, the only logical thing then is to listen more, and more detailed.. not nice but they think it's necessary.