14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo has won a motion from a secretive court, allowing it to publicly reveal information about its efforts to avoid becoming part of PRISM.
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled that the Justice Department must allow the company to unseal documents regarding a classified 2008 case that Yahoo states will demonstrate their objections to being part of the government spying projects, The Daily Dot reports.
The ruling gives Yahoo a way to win back some of its users’ trust after its name appeared in documents leaked by Edward Snowden regarding the PRISM project in which companies such as Yahoo were granting the NSA access to their servers.
It was indicated, several weeks ago, that Yahoo was the name of the company that fought the FISA court in 2008, but there was no way to prove this until now.
The company petitioned the court to review an order that they considered violated the users’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures since it featured getting information without a warrant.
The judges responded that Yahoo’s concerns were “overblown” and that collecting information such as that did not violate the Constitution.
With these documents unclassified, the Internet giant can prove that they didn’t become part of PRISM without fighting the government agency in court.
After the NSA documents were revealed, Yahoo released a statement saying that they have not joined any program “in which we volunteer to share user data with the U.S. government.”
It seems that “volunteer” is the key word in the company’s phrasing, indicating that indeed Yahoo did not willingly give out the information the government was demanding of it.
Other companies have been mentioned in the documents as well, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Skype and YouTube. For the most part, they released similar statements at the time, although none has made proof of fighting the NSA, as Yahoo has.