Judge orders Yahoo to Court for Possibly Taking Snapshots of all Emails (Typed).
07-24-2016, 10:58 PM
No way of really knowing if these were draft emails saved in the draft folder or if indeed Yahoo takes a snapshot of every email that is typed.
http://www.pcmag.com/news/346396/yahoo-o...ted-emails
http://www.pcmag.com/news/346396/yahoo-o...ted-emails
Quote:Quote:
Just what kind of email retentions powers does Yahoo have? According to a policy guide from the company, Yahoo cannot recover emails that have been deleted from a user's account—simple as that. If the email is in a user's account, it's fair game, and Yahoo can even give law enforcement the IP address of whatever computer is being used to send said email.
Or, at least, that's what Yahoo has said. A magistrate judge from the Northern District of California has ordered Yahoo to produce documents, as well as a witness for deposition, related to the company's ability to recover seemingly deleted emails in a UK drug case.
As Motherboard reports, a UK defendant was convicted—and is currently serving an extra 20-year prison sentence—as part of a conspiracy to import drugs into the United Kingdom. He's currently appealing the conviction, in part because the means by which Yahoo recovered the emails in question allegedly violate British law.
These weren't emails sent and received in the usual sense. Rather, one person would log into the Yahoo email account in question and compose a draft of a message. Another person would log into the account later, read the draft, and either delete the draft itself or backspace through what was previously typed. The person would then add new text into a draft as a kind-of reply to the original message. And this process would go back and forth—no emails actually went out, but the draft function was used as the means by which the parties would communicate.
Yahoo claims that its auto-save functionality, meant to preserve draft emails, is the means by which Yahoo was able to provide snapshots of some of these seemingly deleted drafts. And while Yahoo filed a number of declarations with the court attempting to explain this fact, they were seemingly contradictory enough to create lots of confusion.
"After informal attempts to gather information about the data-gathering process from Yahoo, on November 16, 2015, Petitioner filed his Application pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782, asking this Court compel discovery from Yahoo," the court's ruling describes.
"Yahoo had earlier provided Petitioner with a 'custodian of records declaration,' which Petitioner contends 'did not respond to or address the most critical issues identified in [his] request.' Before filing his Application, Petitioner requested that Yahoo voluntarily agree to depositions, but Yahoo refused, offering instead to provide an additional declaration."
Yahoo will have until August 31 to provide the demanded documents—non-privileged ones, that is—and one witness to help explain the company's procedures.
"The Court agrees with Yahoo that Petitioner's requests are somewhat broad; however, the Court also agrees that Yahoo's seemingly conflicting responses up to this point create a situation where Petitioner cannot be certain he understands the process of information gathering he seeks to challenge. While Yahoo believes that Petitioner seeks information that is cumulative given its interrogatory responses, it would appear that the requested discovery would not necessarily be cumulative, but might instead provide clarity to Petitioner regarding Yahoo's data-gathering methods," the court's ruling reads.
