(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Criticism of Internet services firm Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) has been piling up since a document detailing the prices the company charges law enforcement agencies for access to user data was posted online, followed by the news that Yahoo is attempting to have the information taken down.
Yahoo’s “guide for law enforcement” was leaked and posted to the whistle-blowing site cryptome.org (www.cryptome.org) after the original Freedom of Information Act request, filed months ago by Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian, was blocked by the company.
Internet service providers are allowed to charge law enforcement agencies a fee for accessing user information in order to recoup the costs of accessing and recording such information.
According to Wired’s Threat Level security blog, Soghoian submitted the FOIA requests to Department of Justice agencies in an effort to reverse-engineer an estimate of how much user information was being accessed by law enforcement agencies. While several organizations, including Comcast and Cox, did not object to the disclosure of their price lists, others, including Yahoo and Verizon, blocked the requests.
Soghoian describes his plan for the information on his blog.
The FOIA includes a provision that enables the companies to object to the disclosure because they provided the information to the DOJ voluntarily.
In its 12-page objection letter (posted online as a PDF by Wired), Yahoo claims that Soghoian could use the information in the list to “shame” the company and ridicule it publicly. Yahoo reportedly also objected to the disclosure of the letter itself.
The letter also claims the information is confidential commercial information, and that the publicizing of the pricing could cause competitive harm to the company. Yahoo also says that if the US Marshalls Service (the organization that responded to the FOIA request) shared its letter objecting to the disclosure, it could “impair the government’s ability to obtain information necessary for making appropriate decisions with regard to future FOIA requests,” which Wired described as a “veiled threat.”
Verizon’s objection was made on the grounds that the price list might be confusing for customers, who might then bombard the company with requests for surveillance and records that are only available to law enforcement. Wired also posted Verizon’s letter online.
Verizon’s guide has also since been posted by Cryptome.
In a follow-up story on Threat Level, Wired reported that Cryptome had received a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice from Yahoo regarding the law enforcement pricing document. The takedown notice claims that the information in the document could be used by criminals to evade surveillance attempts by law enforcement.
Cryptome owner John Young has reportedly yet to comply with the takedown notice, instead sending a defiant letter indicating that he could find no record of a copyright for the document.
The numerous reactions to the situation, posted around the Internet, have ranged from some seemingly oversensitive privacy concerns (including the possible overuse of words like “spy” in relation to was is apparently a pretty commonplace occurrence), to a general zeroing-in on Yahoo’s concerns that the information could be used to “shame” the company.
An article on NBC’s Bay Area website typifies a certain kind of outrage-expressing post.
Along with the content of the “spying guide,” Cryptome now includes entries for Yahoo’s takedown notice, as well as a document detailing the company’s communications with the site. Over the weekend, the site also added similar guides for ATT and Sprint.
