14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA isn’t making life easy for any of the companies involved. Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer uncomfortably revealed that if anyone talks about what the NSA is asking of them or reveal any data regarding the requests, they could go to jail.
Present on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, Mayer was asked what would happen if she were to simply talk about what was happening, even though the government had forbidden it.
“Releasing classified information is treason. It generally lands you incarcerated,” Mayer said.
She says, however, that Yahoo doesn’t just hand out all data the government agency requests, but they scrutinize each request and push back on a lot of them. However, once more, the company cannot really talk about this kind of things because they’re classified.
"I'm proud to be part of an organization that from the very beginning in 2007, with the NSA and FISA and PRISM, has been skeptical and has scrutinized those requests. In 2007 Yahoo filed a lawsuit against the new Patriot Act, parts of PRISM and FISA, we were the key plaintiff. A lot of people have wondered about that case and who it was. It was us ... we lost. The thing is, we lost and if you don't comply, it's treason," Mayer said.
Yahoo is one of the companies that was mentioned in the first batch of NSA files published over three months ago. The company’s name was mentioned among the PRISM contributors, along with Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and many others.
After denying they provided the NSA with direct access to their servers or working with them willingly, Yahoo obtained the right to declassify a key document indicating they went to court to try to resist the NSA’s demands, but lost the battle.