A secret order demanding Yahoo assist with an effort by law enforcement to scan customer emails was issued under a program approved by President Bush and set to expire at the end of 2017, according to a new report.
The 2015 data collection was authorized pursuant to a Section 702 order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, two officials familiar with the matter told Reuters Wednesday evening.
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Section 702 was amended in 2008 by Congress. The National Security Agency claimed authority to operate bulk data collection programs under the legislation, but that fact went unknown to a majority in Congress until the programs were exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013.
The feds reportedly used a program known as PRISM in asking Yahoo to build software that could help sift through mail received by its users. The program, in theory, is meant to enable surveillance of communication sent by foreign nationals that pass through American servers, but has been criticized for vacuuming up information on millions of Americans in the process.
The report raises new questions. Among them is whether the company was forced to comply, or whether it chose to provide assistance voluntarily. The federal government is not known to have used Section 702 to compel assistance from private companies in the past.
Another issue is whether the feds could claim legal authority to view the records, even without Section 702 authority, in the event that Yahoo complied voluntarily.
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The company on Wednesday denied that it assisted the feds with surveillance efforts, saying in a statement that initial reporting by Reuters had been mistaken. “The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.”
The latest revelation could influence whether Congress chooses to renew Section 702, which is set to expire on Dec. 31, 2017. Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu already expressed concerns earlier in the week, saying that if the report was true, it constituted a “gross abuse of federal power.”
“Private-sector companies and private citizens are not an arm of law enforcement or an extension of our intelligence agencies,” Lieu added in a statement. “The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is clear: Government cannot search or seize your private information without a warrant.”
Intelligence and administration officials have declined to confirm the existence of the program. Aside from its 29-word statement on Wednesday, Yahoo has declined to discuss details of the case.
