Yahoo Accused Of Secretly Scanning Emails For U.S. Government

A Reuters report has said that Yahoo that built a special custom software to enable it to comply with a classified request from the U.S. government to share customer emails. It states that Yahoo secretly scanned millions of its users' Yahoo Mail accounts in order to provide them to U.S intelligence or law enforcement authorities.

According to Reuters, Yahoo started its surveillance reportedly in 2015 "at the behest of National Security Agency or FBI."  The claim is based on information shared by three former employees of the company and another person familiar with matter, who have chosen to remain unidentified.

There is no details available on what the authorities were looking for, but it was revealed that Yahoo was asked to look for a "for a set of characters."  This could either be a phrase or few words present within incoming mails.

The decision of the Yahoo's Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to comply with the directive created a major uproar within Yahoo according to the sources which in fact resulted in the exit of Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos.

Reportedly Mayer and General Counsel for Yahoo Ron Bell asked the email engineering team to develop a software to identify and "siphon" off messaging with the required characters without informing the security team.  Stamos resigned saying he has been left out of an important decision affecting users' security.

Yahoo has only issued a brief statement without any comments on the matter.

"Yahoo is a law-abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States," the tech firm said in a statement sent to the Reuters.

Now working for Facebook, Stamos also declined to comment on the issue.

The struggling tech giant is currently in the process of being acquired by wireless company Verizon.

Other major tech companies Twitter, Microsoft Corp, and Alphabet Inc's Google have all denied that they have every participate in such information sharing programs.

"We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: 'no way'," said a Google spokesperson when queried if the NSA asked the company to develop software to scan Gmail.

Microsoft also issued a similar denial.

Tech companies have been under pressure from intelligence agencies to provide customer data for their foreign intelligence gathering measures, although Edward Snowden's explosive disclosures has forced the NSA to dial back.

 Several civil liberties groups have criticized Yahoo for not challenging the government's order.

"It is deeply disappointing that Yahoo declined to challenge this sweeping surveillance order, because customers are counting on technology companies to stand up to novel spying demands in court," said Patrick Toomey, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.