Sam Biddle, writing for The Intercept:

After Tuesday’s revelatory story by Reuters’ Joseph Menn that exposed an apparent vast, secret, government-ordered email surveillance program at Yahoo, the company has issued a brief statement through Joele Frank, a public relations firm.

Here’s a link to the Reuters article in question.

Yahoo’s email statement, via Jacob Silber of the Joele Frank communications firm:

Good morning –

We are reaching out on behalf of Yahoo regarding yesterday’s Reuters article. Yahoo said in a statement:

“The article is misleading. We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure. The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems.”

Best,

The Joele Frank Team

Sam Biddle:

This is an extremely carefully worded statement, arriving roughly 20 hours after the Reuters story first broke. That’s a long time to craft 29 words.

And:

It would mean a lot more for this denial to come straight from the keyboard of a named executive at Yahoo—perhaps Ron Bell, the company’s general counsel—rather than a “strategic communications firm.”

This feels like a disaster for Yahoo.