Yahoo taps surveillance critic as security chief

Security expert and surveillance critic Alex Stamos is Yahoo’s new Vice President of Information Security, the company announced on Monday.

Previously, Stamos was Chief Technology Officer at Internet security firm Artemis and is an organizer of TrustyCon, a technology conference organized and sponsored by anti-surveillance companies and advocacy groups.

{mosads}Yahoo’s hiring of Stamos comes in a series of steps taken by the company to increase security after last year’s reports about U.S. government surveillance affecting the company, including encrypting emails by default, which began earlier this year.

Stamos “will lead all aspects of information security at Yahoo, including our team of Yahoo ‘Paranoids,’ charged with making our products as secure as possible,” Yahoo Senior Vice President of Platforms and Personalization Products Jay Rossiter wrote in a company blog post.

“This is a broad role which includes implementing top-to-bottom security for our products and systems but also to lead the company and the industry in not just how security works today but how it needs to work in the future.”

In the post announcing Stamos, Rossiter said the company is focused on user experience, part of which “is the trust that consumers put in us to keep their personal data secure.”

“This trust is critical to our brand and is critical to our commitment to the hundreds of millions of users who make our products part of their daily habits,” he wrote.