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Yahoo scanning of users' emails violates rights: Analyst

Wednesday, 05 October 2016 10:38 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 05 October 2016 10:40 AM ]

This file photo taken on August 5, 2015 shows a billboard for the technology company Yahoo in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

Reports have surfaced of the US Internet giant Yahoo scanning of hundreds of millions of emails in 2015 at the request of American intelligence agencies. Reacting to the news, a former US army psychological warfare officer Scott Bennett has told Press TV that this action by Yahoo “betrays” the US Constitution and “violates” people’s rights.

“This is a betrayal of their stockholders, their whole belief system, and their core identity. This is a betrayal because people in the United States and across the world have a trust in their internet service providers and their phone companies that their communications are private. The Constitution of the United States recognizes the people have inviolable rights. That means they cannot be violated under any conditions other than a court order and for a limited time,” Bennett said.

The analyst also stated that intelligence agencies are attempting to organize people, to control them and to use their emails and information in the supposed war on terror which is “nonsense.”

He went on to say the agenda of these agencies is to “test the waters” and to see how much they can control these technical companies.

Bennett further mentioned that the United States has “invented” and “generated” all of the hacking and cyberwarfare that has been unleashed against it.

According to Bennett, the hacking by state-sponsored hackers who have now accessed the Yahoo group emails, all started with the national Security Agency (NSA) spying programs.

“The NSA and the CIA go into these companies and ask them to develop the backdoors and the skeleton keys and the secret programs in order to siphon off material. And that morphs and transmutes into cyber weapons that are then used against the United States to reinforce this fantasy of being threatened,” he said.

Bennett also argued that the United States designed this entire war on terror for the consolidation and control of the American public, adding that it was all a “contrived artificial” war that was designed to knock off the Middle East civilizations and plant the “neoconservative hegemony empire.”

On several occasions, Internet companies have complained that the US government tried to force them to give away their users’ information.

Yahoo reported earlier this year that some 200 million accounts may have been accessed and that hacked data was being offered for sale online. The users of Yahoo’s online services were urged to review accounts for suspicious activity. They were also asked to change passwords.

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