US government threatened Yahoo with $250,000-per-day fine if it did not hand over user data to NSA

Yahoo took matter to secret court, but failed to reverse government demands

The US government threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 per day if it refused to comply with demands to hand over user data.

In a blog post, Ron Bell, general counsel at Yahoo, explains that the firm may release more than 1,500 pages of secret papers from its challenge to the expansion of US surveillance laws dating back to 2007-2008. Yahoo took the battle to the court but ultimately failed to resist the government's demands that it co-operate with Prism, the NSA's mass surveillance programme which was revealed last year by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Bell says that in 2007, the US government amended a law so that it could demand user information from online services but he stated that Yahoo refused to comply because it viewed this as "unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance".

However, its legal challenge and a later appeal did not succeed, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered Yahoo to give the US government the data it sought.

Yahoo's role in the 2007-2008 lawsuit remained classified until 2013, and Bell claims the firm has attempted to declassify and share the findings from the case. But even now, portions of the documents remain sealed and classified, "unknown even to our team", he says.

But perhaps the most striking note is Bell's allegation that the US government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if Yahoo refused to comply.

"Our fight continues. We are still pushing for the FISC to release materials from the 2007-2008 case in the lower court. The FISC indicated previously that it was waiting on the FISC-R ruling in relation to the 2008 appeal before moving forward. Now that the FISC-R [court of review] matter is resolved, we will work hard to make the materials from the FISC case public, as well," Bell writes.