Yahoo wrote in its objection letter that if its pricing information were disclosed … would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”
Yahoo isn’t happy that a detailed menu of the spying services itprovides to “law enforcement” and spy agencies has leaked onto the web.
After earlier reports this week that Yahoo had blocked an FOIAFreedom of Information release of its “law enforcement and intelligenceprice list”, someone helpfully provided a copy of the Yahoo company’sspying guide to the whistleblower web site Cryptome.org.
The 17-page guide, which Yahoo has tried to suppress via legal lettersto the Cryptome.org site run by freedom of information champion JohnYoung [No relation to Mr.Young of EAU. — Ed], describes Yahoo’s policies on keeping the data of Yahoo Email and Yahoo Groups users, as well as the surveillance and spying capabilities it can give to the U.S. government and its agencies.
The Yahoo document is a price list for these spying services and has already resulted in many people closing down their accounts in protest. However, closing a Yahoo account is not as easy as one might expect: users have reported great difficulty in finding the link to delete their account, and, Yahoo will still keep data for another 90 days.
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The price list that Yahoo tried to prevent the government fromreleasing … in one small paragraph in the 17-pageleaked document. According to this list, Yahoo charges the governmentabout $30 to $40 for the contents, including e-mail, of a subscriber’saccount. It charges $40 to $80 for the contents of a Yahoo group.