Yahoo Reveals Details Of Government Data Requests

Yahoo has finally been allowed to publish its first Transparency Report after taking the U.S government to court to be allowed to release such data into the public domain. The data reveals that the U.S government made 12,444 requests on 40,322 users to Yahoo in the first half of 2013 covering January 1st to June 30th. Of those requests Yahoo disclosed full access to content 4604 times – that means emails, chat messages and so on. In 6798 cases it only chose to disclose meta data such as the account name. In 801 cases no valid data was found while in 241 cases Yahoo rejected government requests.

Yahoo is still unable to disclose the number of “secret requests” it gets from the U.S government, something several other companies are also fighting the U.S government to be allowed to do. The U.S government is doing everything within its power to block such requests from big technology companies including playing the “national security card” which seems to be a veto to block anything that leads to some kind of constructive transparency.

You can read Yahoo’s first Transparency Report right here.

Image courtesy of Yahoo