Tuesday, July 16, 2013

NSA Surveillance: Yahoo wins legal victory against partial confidentiality - Heise Newsticker

Yahoo has enforced in the context of Internet surveillance in court the disclosure of previously undisclosed court documents. The body responsible for the supervision of the Foreign Intelligence Court Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in Washington has ruled that a 2008 decision must be made public. Yahoo had then appealed against the need to pass data from clients to the U.S. government. However, the court ruled against Yahoo. The decision is considered groundbreaking because it was subject to an Internet company in an attempt to defend themselves against the publication of user data after the foreign spy FISA law.

FISA court proceedings are strictly confidential. Long time had not even known that Yahoo was the company concerned in the case. This revealed the New York Times a few weeks ago. Now Yahoo sued it to publish the court decision and the arguments on both sides – with success. Before the publication of the U.S. Government may, however, consider whether parts of the documents to remain secret. It has up to 29 July time to send a schedule for it.

The procedure of Yahoo enjoys the civil rights of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Subsequently submitted its report to the end of April to the way companies handle the data of their users Yahoo gets a special mention. The company had applied for its users, and not because it had not to look good in public. This “secret struggle” for the user rights does the EFF as a model for other companies.

Yahoo struggles since the first revelations about the spying programs of the U.S. intelligence agencies against the impression that they have passed user data en masse. So Yahoo penetrated as Google and Facebook to be allowed to publish figures on the requests. Yahoo was “very pleased” about the court’s ruling, the newspaper quoted San Jose Mercury News the company. Yahoo believe the documents would contribute constructively to the ongoing debate. ( Material with the dpa ) / (anw)

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