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(image source: Yahoo!)
BY EVAN THOMAS
Yahoo! has joined the disclosure movement — Friday the company published a list of
government data requests through the first half of 2013.
Total requests covered less than .01 percent of global Yahoo! users. It's worth noting
Tumblr is not included — Yahoo! says the blog platform will issue its own report later.
(via Yahoo!)
The U.S. saw the highest request frequency — the government wanted info from more than
40,000 different user accounts. Yahoo! released content for 4,604 of these requests; in 67,988
cases it provided metadata like email addresses, locations and message headers. (via Yahoo!)
Yahoo! lumped together all requests to create its chart — Ars Technica reports it includes
requests from law enforcement as well as National Security Letters and those requests under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. (via Ars Technica)
But for now Yahoo! is prohibited from going into more detail about national security requests
— it can't even publish a count of just the FISA requests.
Yahoo! is reportedly suing the government for permission to get to the specifics. "Democracy
demands accountability, and accountability requires transparency," Yahoo!'s legal counsel
writes. (via VentureBeat)
The company joins other networks like Facebook and Google in publishing transparency reports
after news of the NSA's ongoing surveillance programs. Facebook's first summary covers
the first half of 2013, like Yahoo!'s; Google has been maintaining bi-annual reports since
2009. (via Facebook, Google)
Yahoo! says it will release these reports every six months. You can read the first one
yourself on Yahoo!'s Tumblr.