U.S. Government Data Requests Detailed By Yahoo Transparency Report

Yahoo has issued its first of twice-yearly transparency reports.

As details about the National Security Agency's cyber surveillance efforts continue to emerge after the Edward Snowden NSA leak earlier this summer - with each subsequent report about the NSA's powers seeming to describe even more sweeping cyber surveillance capabilities than before - Yahoo is taking the step towards transparency, which the resurgent web giant promised its customers months ago that it would take, offering a transparency report for the first part of the year that details the total government data requests from the U.S. federal government, as well as other information.

According to Yahoo's transparency report, the U.S. government requested data 12,444 times on a total of 40,322 Yahoo accounts in the first half of this year (January 1 through June 30, 2013). The web service and search company said that out of those requests on tens of thousands of accounts, it only rejected 2 percent.

The vast majority of outcomes from U.S. government user data requests to Yahoo was that non-content data on accounts would be disclosed. Non-content data is the term Yahoo is using to describe any data from or about the user that is not created, communicated, or stored by users through Yahoo services. The photos on Flickr and the body of an email would be considered content, while the account information you signed up for that Flickr or email account with (email address, name, location, bio information, billing information, login details, IP address) is the "non-content data." Fifty five percent of the time, Yahoo responded to U.S. government data requests disclosing only non-content data.

Another 37 percent of Yahoo's response to U.S. government data requests results in Yahoo giving up users' content data as well. That means that of the 12,444 government requests for data, Yahoo disclosed users' login and account details 6,798 times and gave the more private content data away 4,604 times for a total of 11, 402 disclosures of user data of some kind. According to Yahoo's report, 801 times the requested data simply could not be found.

Yahoo disclosed other countries' government requests for data from the company, now headed by Melissa Mayer. In Yahoo's blog, General Counsel Ron Bell expressed the company's wish to be transparent and fight for its customers' privacy. "I want to highlight our approach to government data requests. Our legal department demands that government data requests be made through lawful means and for lawful purposes. We regularly push back against improper requests for user data, including fighting requests that are unclear, improper, overbroad or unlawful. In addition, we mounted a two-year legal challenge to the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and recently won a motion requiring the U.S. Government to consider further declassifying court documents from that case."

Bell went on to restate that Yahoo will publish a transparency report every six months to " provide users with further understanding of the government requests that we receive," he said. "Democracy demands accountability, and accountability requires transparency. We hope our report encourages governments around the world to more openly share information about the requests they make for users' information."