Californian Judge, Paul Grewal, passed a judgment last Thursday expressing that the US government cannot indefinitely deny web giant Yahoo to make their subpoena public.
The subpoena issued to data provider Yahoo, usually calls for them to release confidential user information like emails and online stored documents. The government’s secrecy request for this subpoena and the judgment thereof were passed without any of the Yahoo lawyers or attorneys being present according to Reuters. This judgment has put into the spotlight the controversial role that authorities have over corporate freedom of speech. It also highlights the question of whether corporations should be allowed to have the same rights as natural persons.
Instead of a stating a fixed period of time to prohibit Yahoo from publicising their subpoena, the Government opted to extend their request until “further order of the court”.
Grewal wrote that “In an era of increasing public demand for transparency about the extent of government demands for data from providers like Yahoo, this cannot stand”. Many will agree with Grewal that transparency SHOULD be at the forefront of any corporation’s modus operandi. According to Forbes, corporations are legal persons and in being that, they are afforded some of the same rights that a natural person has, thus allowing them to sue and be sued. Denying a corporation’s freedom of speech is to directly undermine the reason why corporations are seen as legal persons.
Ok, enough legal jargon. What does all of this mean to the man on the street? According to WSJ.com in 2014, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, expressed their concern to the National Security Administration (NSA) for their tactics exposed by the former contractor Edward Snowden. This revelation in its own right has drawn even more attention to Government bullying.
If the Government wants to get their hands on your confidential data, a subpoena with motivation must be presented to providers such as Google, Yahoo or Facebook. Google for instance has gone as far as to blog their methods of handling these Government subpoenas. They scrutinize every request to make sure it is kept at a legal standard. Google can also request authority to narrow the request according to global IT news provider, ZDNet.
It’s of my opinion that as long as Goliaths like Yahoo and Google keep fighting the good fight to protect our data, the Davids of the world don’t need to wield their slingshots just yet.
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