Yahoo has won a legal case related to Prism requests after the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordered the government to publish documents from a 2008 case.
The order requires the US government to review documents, which should be declassified and inform the court of its decision by 29 July.
Earlier month, Yahoo filed papers with FISC seeking permission to disclose files, which the company says will show how it objected strenuously, after the National Security Agency (NSA) demanded its customers’ data.
Reacting to the court’s ruling, Yahoo said it was pleased by the FISC decision.
"Once those documents are made public, we believe they will contribute constructively to the ongoing public discussion around online privacy," the company said.
Yahoo is reported to have received between 12,000 to 13,000 requests for customers’ information from the US law enforcement agencies between 1 December 2012 and 31 May 2013.
Yahoo, along with Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and other firms were identified in NSA documents, revealed in June this year, as the companies participating in the US surveillance programme, Prism.
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Nineteen US organisations represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have filed a lawsuit against the NSA for violating constitutional rights by its secret surveillance programmes.
EFF legal director Cindy Cohn said: "The First Amendment protects the freedom to associate and express political views as a group, but the NSA’s mass, untargeted collection of Americans’ phone records violates that right by giving the government a dramatically detailed picture into our associational ties."
