Yahoo installed a custom software program to search messages to hundreds of millions of accounts at the behest of US intelligence officials with an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret tribunal, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Intelligence officials told Reuters that all Yahoo had to do was modify existing systems for stopping child pornography from being sent through its email or filtering spam messages. But the pornography filters are aimed only at video and still images and cannot search text, as the Yahoo program did. “The USA Freedom Act requires the executive branch to declassify Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions that involve novel interpretations of laws or the Constitution,” Wyden said. Intelligence officials said the Yahoo order resembled other requests for monitoring online communications of suspected terrorists.

Source: Mint October 08, 2016 07:07 UTC