Civil Rights and Social Justice

A bipartisan group of 48 U.S. lawmakers wants two government agencies to explain a surveillance program in which Yahoo reportedly scanned all the messages of its email users on behalf of the FBI.

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of 48 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday asked the Obama administration to brief Congress "as soon as possible" about a 2015 Yahoo program to scan all of its users' incoming email at the behest of the government.

Not long after Edward Snowden's revelations of massive government surveillance of the American public, Yahoo was one of the eight tech giants that called for strong reforms that would protect their customers.

And back in 2007, Yahoo went to court to challenge a government surveillance program in order to protect its users' privacy.

According to a new report by Reuters citing anonymous former employees, in 2015, Yahoo covertly built a secret “custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information.”

Demonstrating that allegedly allowing the US government to scan hundreds of millions of your users' emails may not just be abetting a violation of the 4th Amendment but also a huge financial liability, we learn

Collette Cobb holds a flag during a news conference outside of the White House following a meeting that members of DC Marijuana Justice had with White House officials in April. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Of all America's minority groups, that composed of Asian-Americans has been traditionally seen as perhaps the most open to Republican overtures. It's been seen as often pro-business and socially conservative.