Yahoo faces big US fines over user data

A secret legal battle between the U.S. government and Yahoo Inc ncover requests for customer data became so acrimonious in 2008 that the government wanted to charge the Internet company $250,000 a day if it didn't comply, WSJ reported.

Yahoo made the threat public Thursday after a special federal court unsealed 1,500 pages of legal documents from a once-classified court battle over the scope of National Security Agency surveillance programs. The documents shed new light on tensions between American technology companies and the intelligence community long before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden began leaking in 2013.

The requests, and the long battles that can follow at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, traditionally are secret. Until last summer, Yahoo wasn't allowed to say that it had challenged government surveillance efforts—even without adding any other details.

Read more on the WSJ website.