14 DAY TRIAL // When light was shed on what the NSA had been doing and the companies providing the intelligence agency with access to their servers, the backlash against those companies was huge.
Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple are the biggest names on the NSA list and they’ve all denied any connection.
On the other hand, since the government and the NSA have not specifically said they did not cooperate with these tech giants, there’s no reason to believe the denials issued by these companies have been anything but PR moves.
When it comes to Internet services, users trust the companies with their privacy. And the NSA scandal only served to emphasize the utopic nature of this notion.
In order to win users back, they’ve lost and the trust of those who are thinking of leaving their services, companies need to put in an effort.
And that’s exactly what Yahoo has been doing. They said time and time again that they did now willingly give data to the NSA.
However, this doesn’t mean data was not provided to the intelligence agency without their knowledge or express consent.
It wasn’t long after the scandal was revealed that Yahoo asked permission to disclose government user data requests to show exactly what requests were forwarded to them by the US authorities.
A few days later, The New York Times ran an article indicating Yahoo had asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review an order received from the government back in 2008.
Yahoo then claimed the request was a violation of the Fourth Amendment since it featured hanging out data on foreign users without a warrant.
But the FISC dismissed the claim and that’s apparently how Yahoo got involved with PRISM, practically against their wish.
Now, Yahoo is once more requesting the FISA court to disclose all details regarding this 2008 case.
In the end, it might not matter much if the documents are revealed, but Yahoo’s image in the users’ eyes is certainly going to grow since it did not just give up their data without a fight.