BT Yahoo and Prism

Yahoo are one of the companies that have been supplying email data to the US government. Would this include data from BT Yahoo accounts, and if so have BT broken any UK data protection rules, as my account is a @btinternet.com account from the dial-up days?

No-one knows. But all the security agencies say they are operating within the law, and scoff as much as you like but until there is evidence to the contrary what alternative do we have but to take those assurances at face value. Fear, whether irrational or not, isn't evidence. And there isn't enough time in the world to read everything, or even apparently, enough (from the inability of the security agencies to act effectively on the information they have already which seems to be the case whenever incidents occur).

Anyway anyone who uses ordinary e-mail as a secure form of transmission, irrespective of the activities of government and their agencies, is a bit of fool IMO - there are the activities of more malign others they should be worrying about more. But if you're paranoid, then if it's electronic, it can be intercepted and decrypted is a good rule of thumb (and if it's physical it can be nicked, opened or scanned for good measure). Back to the caves people . . .

It's actually quite easy to send secure email, for example using GnuPG

But see:

In reference to xkcd.com/936/:

Through 20 years of effort, we've successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess

I'd be more worried about the way Yahoo still seems to get hacked by other than "legitimate" agencies.

Yesterday I received two spam emails from someone with a yahoo account who has been dead for over a year, and whose computer I know to be not in use. Later in the day I received one identical to one of those from someone else I know, who is using a btinternet.com email address. Ah! quoth me - of course that's yahoo!

If you don't want a Government to know anything about you it's probably best not to:

Register to vote
Get a bank account or enter into any form of credit agreement and don't apply for any sort of benefit or work whatsoever.

Trouble is folks that extremists are not upfront about their activities so they have to employ a broad brush approach in the hope that some of the scum of whatever faction slip up and give the game away.

If the powers that be did nothing to try and prevent the likes of what happened in London and New York what would those that are outraged say?

Yes I know in some countries it is used to suppress opposition and that is wrong.

I doubt the NSA is going to be worried by that link to a singing dog you sent your friend last week.

That sounds like a lot of TFH nonsense to me