The US government in 2008 threatened to fine
Yahoo Inc. $250,000 a day if it failed to turn over customer data to
intelligence agencies, according to documents unsealed on Thursday.
The
documents shed new light on how the government dealt with US Internet
companies that were reluctant to comply with orders from the secretive
US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which rules on government
requests to conduct surveillance for national security issues.
Yahoo
lost the battle, which experts say helped pave the way for the Prism
surveillance program revealed last summer by former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
"It's always been a little bit
behind the curtain as to what Internet companies do when they actually
receive these requests. Now we have evidence that Yahoo did in fact
fight this battle and look at considerable fines as a consequence of not
disclosing the data," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"It tells us how very
serious the Bush administration was about trying to get the Internet
firms to turn over this data. Until the disclosure, it was mostly
hearsay that they were willing to impose these penalties."
"That's heavy handed," he added, referring to the threat of fines.
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