Thursday, June 2, 2016

Yahoo Disclosures National Security Letters

Yahoo (via Hacker News, Slashdot):

As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, Yahoo is announcing today the public disclosure of three National Security Letters (NSLs) that it received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This marks the first time any company has been able to publicly acknowledge receiving an NSL as a result of the reforms of the USA Freedom Act.

[…]

As explained in our Transparency Report, an NSL is a type of compulsory legal process used by the FBI in national security investigations. The letters Yahoo is making public today were received in April 2013, August 2013, and June 2015, respectively. Yahoo complied with these three NSLs and, to the extent we had the information requested, we disclosed it as authorized by law. Specifically, we produced the name, address, and length of service for each of the accounts identified in two of the NSLs, and no information in response to the third NSL as the specified account did not exist in our system. Each NSL included a nondisclosure provision that prevented Yahoo from previously notifying its users or the public of their existence.

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