Twitter and Yahoo Silenced—For Now—in Subpoena Spat

Zoe Tillman, Legal Times

Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Richard Roberts.

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/NLJ.

Twitter Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. won't get a chance to respond to efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to bar the companies from sharing information about grand jury subpoenas, at least for now.

The Justice Department is appealing a federal magistrate judge's orders that gave Twitter and Yahoo the opportunity to respond to the government’s application to restrict disclosure about grand jury subpoenas. The government is also challenging the judge’s order requiring prosecutors file a public copy of its nondisclosure applications.

Twitter and Yahoo were supposed to file notices today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on whether they wanted to intervene on the government's nondisclosure requests. Late Thursday, however, a federal district judge indicated the Justice Department was appealing the magistrate judge's decisions.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1396015074505/Twitter-and-Yahoo-Silenced%26mdash%3BFor-Now%26mdash%3Bin-Subpoena-Spat#ixzz2xvVUNIa0

Government Data Requests Fall at Yahoo But Rise at Google

By VINDU GOEL

Michael Nelson/European Pressphoto AgencyThe range of national security and FISA requests that Yahoo received in the last half of 2013 suggests that American intelligence officials were conducting some broad sweeps early last year, rather than narrowly targeting their requests.

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Yahoo saw a significant drop in the number of government requests for data about its users in the second half of 2013, compared with the first half, according to the semiannual transparency report that the Internet company published on Thursday.

Google, on the other hand, saw a small increase in data requests over the same period.

Yahoo said it had received 21,425 requests from 17 countries for information on 32,493 accounts from July 1 to Dec. 31, 2013, with the United States accounting for about one-third of them.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/27/government-data-requests-fall-at-yahoo-but-rise-at-google/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Judge Asks Twitter and Yahoo to Respond to Subpoena Question

Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola.

Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/NLJ.

Zoe Tillman, Legal Times

A federal magistrate judge in Washington wants to hear from Twitter Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. before ruling on a request by federal prosecutors to block those companies from disclosing information on subpoenas.

In two orders issued on March 21, U.S. District Magistrate Judge John Facciola said he received applications from the government asking that Twitter and Yahoo be barred from "notifying any person of the existence or content of" the grand jury subpoenas.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/legaltimes/id=1202648129128/Judge-Asks-Twitter-and-Yahoo-to-Respond-to-Subpoena-Question#ixzz2wuyE1BZ1

Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ

• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images

The GCHQ program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images ofYahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

News World news The NSA files Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ

• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images

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• Spencer Ackerman and James Ball
• The Guardian, Thursday 27 February 2014
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The GCHQ program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Microsoft, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google And Yahoo Join Apple In Revealing More On NSA Requests

 Darrell Etherington (@drizzled)

All the big tech companies are opening up a bit more about requests made by the U.S. National Security Agency, with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIndetailing new info included in their respective transparency reports today. The new reports now include how many requests for the data of its members it has received from the government, how many total users were affected, and what percentage of those receive a response from the company.

Apple released similar data last week alongside its earning call, and there’s a reason for the timing that’s non-coincidental: A change to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act just put into effect now allows the companies to share more specifics around what kind of information they’re sharing and being asked to share by the government. Theincreased transparency was put into effect last week, in a ruling addressed to the legal counsel of all those companies listed above.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/03/microsoft-facebook-linkedin-google-and-yahoo-join-apple-in-revealing-more-on-nsa-requests/

Yahoo Email Servers attacked by hackers

Yahoo has reported that its Email service suffered attacks which resulted in the compromise of an unknown number of accounts. The tech company said it has taken protective action by prompting all email users to immediately reset their passwords.

• Los Angeles Times

Yahoo malware turned European computers into bitcoin slaves

Search firm remains silent on how its ad servers infected Windows PCs of visitors to homepage

• Alex Hern
• theguardian.com, Wednesday 8 January 2014 06.52 EST

Yahoo! President and CEO Marissa Mayer delivers a keynote address at the 2014 International CES at The Las Vegas Hotel & Casino on January 7, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Ethan Miller/Getty Images

As many as two million European users of Yahoo may have received PC malware from virus-laden ads served by its homepage over a four-day period last week.

Some of the malware would turn PCs into bitcoin miners - a huge drain on its computing resources - without users' knowledge. Yahoo has been criticised for not saying how many people could be affected or doing anything to help those with the malware, which attacked flaws in Java modules on systems.