Documents declassified recently revealed that Yahoo Inc. was to be fined $250,000 a day if it does not comply to U.S. government's intelligence organizations demand to hand over data of customers.

Reuters reported that the threat of fines was made in 2008 after the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Service Court ordered the data turn over. The news has revealed what the US government does to get the technology companies comply with the order.

Although Yahoo contested the efforts of the intelligence agencies to obtain data from their customers, the tech giant lost but the article quoted Executive Director Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said, . now we have evidence that Yahoo did in fact fight this battle and look at considerable fines as a consequence of not disclosing the data."

An article last year that was published by the Washington Post stated that the National Security Agency and FBI has a program called PRISM that enables then to tap and get information of targets via the Internet through customers data of technological companies, although the 2013 article mentioned the name of the firms, the latest article disclosed that Yahoo tried to oppose the surveillance tactic.

In a blog post, Yahoo General Counsel Ron Bell said ,"despite the declassification and release, portions of the documents remain sealed and classified to this day, unknown even to our team."

The US government has been secretive about the surveillance program but according to Reuters report the recent documents has provided the public a glimpse on the surveillance efforts.

The June 2013 article in Washington Post had Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper depending the alleged surveillance practice by stating "information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats. The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans."