Weaver95

So, lately there has been a quiet effort to get Yahoo, Nextel, and a whole bunch of other telcom and web companies to tell the public the details of how corporations help the government spy on their customers.  Unsurprisingly, these companies object to the attempts to expose this information. Take this article for example:

Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

Wow.  Shock their customers.  And Yahoo is dead set against that information being released to the public.  They’re fighting tooth and claw to make sure that ‘we the people’ (i.e. their customers) don’t find out all the dirty details of how Yahoo sells us out to The Man.

Wait - what’s this?  Oh look! Yahoo’s internal documentation regarding how they help the government sell us out to The Man! thanks cryptome.   Head down to around pg 12 or so - there’s even a handy price list. Yahoo sells us out for $30-40 per email account.   I don’t know what’s more insulting - that yahoo has a price list for their spying, or that the prices are set so low.

Yahoo is fighing really really hard to make sure that documentation doesn’t get out to the great unwashed masses.  Anyone reading this blog might want to take a moment or two and skim that document.  Might be something there that jumps out at you, and I figure if a corporation fights to keep something secret, it’s worth reading.