Imagine a futuristic society in which robots are deployed to everybody’s house, fulfilling a mission to scan the inside of each and every residence. Does that mental image look far-off and futuristic? Well, this week’s Yahoo e-mail surveillance revelations perhaps prove this intrusive robot scenario has already arrived in the digital world.
Days ago, Reuters cited anonymous sources and reported that Yahoo covertly built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming e-mails for specific information.” Yahoo, the report noted, “complied with a classified US government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI.”
