Yahoo Scanned User Emails for the US Government: Reuters

Hundreds of millions of Yahoo email accounts were scanned by the company for information relevant to U.S. intelligence work at the behest of the federal government, according to a report out Tuesday from Reuters.

Citing multiple sources "familiar with the matter," Reuters reports that either the National Security Agency or the FBI made the request of the company, and it complied.

"Some surveillance experts said this represents the first case to surface of a U.S. Internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages," Joseph Menn wrote for Reuters, "as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time."

The report lacks important details — it notes only that government officials were searching for words or phrases, rather than any specific information.

And the news agency is declining to name its sources, presumably because the individuals required anonymity before contributing to the report.

Alex Stamos, the former chief information security officer at Yahoo, who declined to comment for the Reuters story, reportedly left the company due to tension caused by CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to comply with the government's request. The report also notes that other senior executives were unhappy with Mayer's actions.

Patch reached out to Yahoo for comment on this story, and it repeated what it told Reuters: “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States."

It did not respond to questions about whether it disputes the report or whether it searched users' emails for the government.

Reuters also reached out to the NSA, which directed all questions to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which declined to comment.

This revelation is a devastating follow-up to Yahoo's recent announcement that at least 500 million user accounts had been hacked, most likely by a "state actor." For a company that has been struggling to find its way as many of its competitors — Facebook, Google — have far surpassed it, this news can only damage customer trust.

If true, the government's actions will also raise serious questions about citizens' rights to privacy.

The ACLU issued a statement on the matter: "Based on this report, the order issued to Yahoo appears to be unprecedented and unconstitutional. The government appears to have compelled Yahoo to conduct precisely the type of general, suspicionless search that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prohibit."

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Photo credit: Sebastian Bergmann via Wikimedia Commons