Yahoo Inc. last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information sought by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.
据知情者称,雅虎公司去年秘密定制软件程序,对所有用户的接收邮件进行搜索,帮助美国情报官员寻找特定信息。
The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.
两名前雅虎雇员和熟悉这一事件的另外一个人说,雅虎按照一份美国政府的机密指令,应美国国家安全局或联邦调查局的要求,对数千万用户的电邮进行扫描。
Some surveillance experts said this is the first known case of a U.S. internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to examining stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.
一些监督专家说,这是第一次出现美国网络公司接受情报机构的要求,对所有接收邮件进行搜索,而不是仅仅检查储存信息或即时扫描少量账号。
It is not known what information intelligence officials were looking for, only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters. That could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment, said the sources, who did not want to be identified.
目前还不清楚,情报官员寻找的是些什么信息,只知道他们要求雅虎搜索特定字样。不愿透露姓名的知情者说,搜索内容可能是邮件或附件中的某个词组。