Yahoo Reportedly Scanned���Secretly���Customer Emails for the NSA & FBI

Do you think when we talk about digital privacy concerns���which we���ve done a LOT in this space���that we���re being overly dramatic? Or that we���re talking about things that are simply not real?

Well, we���re not. This stuff is absolutely real.

Reuters is reporting that, last year, Yahoo willingly gave in to a classified demand - made by the government - that it scan incoming emails from hundreds of millions of its customers; this is according to former Yahoo employees.

The agencies behind the ���request��� were���surprise, surprise���the National Security Agency (NSA), as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Yahoo was tasked to scan the emails for ���specific information,��� but it is not known for what they were asked to look, precisely.

The Reuters article points out that, according to experts, Yahoo���s actions represent the first instance of a U.S.-based Internet company complying with a government request like this in such a way that they scan all of the incoming emails from customers. Additionally, the article mentions that no one at Reuters was able to figure out what information gathered from any customer emails was actually passed off by Yahoo to the feds, or even if any was transmitted.

Like I said at the outset of this article, we talk a lot about these kinds of issues, and yet there are still large numbers of people out there who shrug their shoulders, thinking we���re making mountains from molehills, or, amazingly enough, just don���t care.
However, it is clear these intrusions are taking place, all around us, and all of the time. What Reuters came to learn is merely a tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg; you can bet on that.

Proceed with caution.

By Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Editor At Large