Sep 12, 2014 Posted by AGA Editor

U.S. threatened Yahoo with huge fine over surveillance.

U.S. authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveillance program requiring it to hand over user data in the name of national security, court documents showed Thursday.

The documents, made public in a rare unsealing by a secretive court panel, “underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government’s surveillance efforts.”

The documents shed new light on the snooping program revealed in leaked files from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The program allowed US intelligence services to sweep up massive amounts of data from major Internet firms including Yahoo and Google.

The 1,500 pages of documents were ordered released by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the case dating from 2007, according to Bell, who said that in 2007, the US government “amended a key law to demand user information from online services.”

Yahoo “refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the US government’s authority.”

US authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveill …
Yahoo’s court challenge failed and it was forced to hand over the US user data.

Since the Snowden leaks, Yahoo and others have been seeking to make public these court documents to show they were forced to comply with government requests and made numerous attempts to fight these efforts, rather than simply acquiescing to them, as some critics say.

Redacted court records, (wonder why they were redacted), showed Yahoo challenged the government on constitutional grounds, saying the surveillance program violated protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Yahoo said in one brief that the government’s requests were “unconstitutional because they permitted warrantless surveillance of US persons’ private communications without prior judicial review, and were not reasonable.” The company argued that the program was not merely monitoring overseas targets but some in the United States “with no knowledge that their Internet communications are being retrieved.”

Yahoo said the process was “similar to what is done in criminal cases” and would require monitoring from the company’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

“The US Supreme Court has never sanctioned warrantless surveillance of US citizens,” but how can we really trust this is not happening to us Americas? They would never lie to us would they?

As per our 4th Amendment: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against any unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.”

Granted, we could argue that the internet is an open book but our telephone conversations, one of their key targeting areas should be off limits and protected by our 4th Amendment.

Any government who has to spy on their own people, fear the same and can have only up to no good on their minds for all of us.

As for all of us Legal Law Abiding Citizens, Probable Cause does NOT exist!!! There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO SPY ON ANY OF US!!!!!!!

Are you awake Yet?