US Congress members demand clarity over Yahoo’s email scanning

A total of 48 members of the US Congress have called on the Attorney General and the head of national intelligence to provide clarity around Yahoo’s email scanning.

The letter is addressed to Loretta Lynch and James Clapper respectively. In it, the senders state that there is “considerable confusion” about the existence and nature of the system that Yahoo used to scan incoming e-mails. They refer to the reporting by Reuters, which was followed by news from The New York Times. It allegedly contained conflicting information about the legal basis of the request to search emails.

As lawmakers, members of Congress would have a responsibility to have accurate information regarding intelligence activities. That is why they want to use the letter to ensure that they receive information as quickly as possible.

The first news about Yahoo’s practices came out early this month via Reuters. The internet giant is said to have received requests from the NSA or the FBI to search incoming emails for certain content. Yahoo would not have resisted the request, because it expected that resistance would be of no avail. The company later called the coverage “misleading” and claimed that “email scanning, as the coverage describes it, does not exist on its systems.”