Yahoo, after receiving orders from the FBI about national security letters, has become more transparent.
On June 1, the tech company publicly announced that FBI has issued national security letters previously to obtain information, and then released those letters online.
Notably, this is first time a company has been able to not only address but also release national security letters, because of the US Freedom Act changes, reported Tech Times.
Incidentally, as part of the US Freedom Act FBI now needs to review the gag orders when an investigation involving NSL closes or when the time period is more than three years in an open case.
The letters in case of Yahoo, was received in April 2013, August 2013 and June 2015, and Yahoo mentioned that it complied with the NSL commands.
Two of the national security letters were sent from an FBI agent from the Dallas, Texas bureau's office, whereas the other was sent from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Now, that the gag order has passed, the government has the required information. However, the company mentioned the same in a statement.
"Specifically, we produced the name, address and length of service for each of the accounts identified in two of the NSLs, and no information in response to the third NSL as the specified account did not exist in our system," the company wrote. "Each NSL included a non-disclosure provision that prevented Yahoo from previously notifying its users or the public of their existence."
Notably, due to the laws, Yahoo had to also turn over the screen names associated with the accounts, the URL(s) related to the account, and the retrieved hardware related information such as ISDNs or DSL data names of the providers.
With the act of Yahoo's release the discussion for NSLs and the demands for user data will notably increase with time for specific legal and security purposes.
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