US government threatens Yahoo with $250,000 fine over user data demand

The US government has threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000 a day if it refused to hand over user data to the National Security Agency,  court documents unsealed yesterday revealed, The Guardian reported.

The company said in a blog post that 1,500 pages of once-secret documents had shone a bright light on Yahoo's previously disclosed clash with the NSA over access to its users' data.

The paper described the company's secret legal battle, which proved unsuccessful in resisting the government's demands for it to cooperate with the NSA's controversial Prism surveillance programme, revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden last year.

''The released documents underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts,'' said company general counsel Ron Bell in a Tumblr post.

Yahoo took the case to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, also known as the Fisa court, which exercises oversight on surveillance orders in national security investigations.

The US government amended a law in 2007 to force online services to submit user information. When Yahoo was asked to hand over user data, the company objected saying the request was ''unconstitutional and overbroad'', BBC reported.

But court documents reveal that the battle over surveillance between technology firms and the US government stretched back years before the Snowden revelations.

According to the new material about the case, first reported by the Washington Post, the companies had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts.

Bell said at one point, the US government threatened to impose $250,000 in fines per day if the company refused to comply.

A federal court, unsealed about 1,500 pages of previously classified documents.