How Yahoo Fought Against PRISM in Secret and Lost

Blogspam at its worst:

> The details of Yahoo's challenge are not completely clear, since the procedure is in part still classified. All the information available on the case comes from the Times story

The Times story is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/technology/secret-court-ru...

So, what exactly do you think would happen if a major company simply refuses/d to comply? Would they arrest the whole company? The CEO? Would it happen secretly? Would they just disappear? How can these "laws" possibly be enforced?

Back in 2009 (when the decision first came to light, although we didn't know what company it applied to), Russ Feingold had some scathing things to say about it:

The decision placed the burden of proof on the company to identify problems related to the implementation of the law, information to which the company did not have access.... Senator Feingold, who has repeatedly raised concerns about the implementation of the PAA and its successor, the FISA Amendments Act (“FAA”), in classified communications with the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, has stated that the court’s analysis would have been fundamentally altered had the company had access to this information and been able to bring it before the court.

In the absence of specific complaints from the company, the court relied on the good faith of the government. As the court concluded, “[w]ithout something more than a purely speculative set of imaginings, we cannot infer that the purpose of the directives (and, thus, of the surveillance) is other than their stated purpose....” One example of the court’s deference to the government concerns minimization procedures, which require the government to limit the dissemination of information about Americans that it collects in the course of its surveillance. Because the company did not raise concerns about minimization, the court “s[aw] no reason to question the adequacy of the minimization protocol.” And yet, the existence of adequate minimization procedures, as applied in this case, was central to the court’s constitutional analysis.

More at http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/14/feingold-yahoo-blind/