Yahoo files suit to disclose details of data requests from government

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Yahoo files suit to disclose details of data requests from government

September 10, 2013 08:09:48 am

[JURIST] Yahoo filed suit [press release] in the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) [official website] on Monday demanding the right to disclose the number of user data requests made by the US government under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) [text]. Last week Yahoo [corporate website] joined Google and Microsoft in publishing a transparency report [report], which details all government data requests from January 1, 2013, through June 30, 2013. However, US law prohibits organizations from disclosing the number of requests under specific national security statutes. General Counsel Ron Bell said:

We believe that the US Government’s important responsibility to protect public safety can be carried out without precluding Internet companies from sharing the number of national security requests they may receive. Ultimately, withholding such information breeds mistrust and suspicion—both of the United States and of companies that must comply with government legal directives.

The government recently released [JURIST report] annual aggregate data about its requests for phone logs and Internet chats. However, Bell said that “The United States should lead the world when it comes to transparency, accountability, and respect of civil liberties and human rights. … Granting our petition for greater transparency around national security requests for user data is a critical second step.”

Revelations surrounding US government surveillance programs have sparked worldwide debate and controversy. In July the FISC granted a motion [JURIST report] by Yahoo to declassify a 2008 FISC judgment that required the company to comply with government requests for user information under the FISA, as well as any actual Yahoo metadata collected by the National Security Agency (NSA) [official website] pursuant to the 2008 FISC order. Earlier in July civil liberties groups filed [JURIST report] an amicus curiae brief in the FISC supporting efforts by Google and Microsoft to publish data concerning how many times the government invoked federal law to request user information for national security purposes. Also in July a judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of California rejected a motion to dismiss [JURIST report] a lawsuit alleging the NSA illegally surveilled “millions of ordinary Americans” in the wake of 9/11. In July the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed an emergency petition [JURIST report] with the US Supreme Court challenging the NSA’s telephone record surveillance program. In June The Guardian reported [JURIST report] that the NSA is collecting call data from Verizon customers under a top secret court order. Also in June Several US lawmakers called [JURIST report] for a review of the government’s surveillance activity in light of recent reports revealing phone and Internet monitoring and a criminal investigation into the activities of Edward Snowden, who came forward as the whistleblower in the NSA surveillance scandal. The US government has charged [JURIST report] former government contractor Snowden with espionage for leaking top secret documents, according to a sealed criminal complaint filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.