Techmeme: GCHQ, aided by NSA, intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of global Yahoo users (Guardian)

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February 27, 2014, 3:30 PM

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Guardian:

GCHQ, aided by NSA, intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of global Yahoo users — UK spy agency intercepted webcam images of millions of Yahoo users — • Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk — • 1.8m users targeted by GCHQ in six-month period alone

eBay, Inc.:

eBay chairman Omidyar defends board members, CEO against Icahn attack, says PayPal should remain part of the company — Statement by Pierre Omidyar, eBay Inc. Chairman of the Board — I am eBay Inc.'s founder, board chairman and largest shareholder. — A new eBay shareholder, Carl Icahn …

More: ZDNet, USA Today, CNNMoney.com, Shareholders Square Table, CNET, TechCrunch and GeekWire

Tweets: @pmarca and @pierre

Steven Perlberg / Business Insider:

Carl Icahn Goes After The eBay Board In A New Open Letter With 6 Facts — Carl Icahn is out with a new open letter to the shareholders of eBay. — There has been quite a back and forth between the activist investor and eBay's board, and the scrap continues today with Icahn laying out six “facts.”

More: Shareholders Square Table and Guardian. Tweets: @cnbc

Steven Russolillo / Wall Street Journal:

Yellen on Bitcoin: Fed Doesn't Have Authority to Regulate It in Any Way … Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said the central bank doesn't have the authority to regulate bitcoin. — “The Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate bitcoin in any way,” …

More: Business Insider, Guardian and TechCrunch. Tweets: @onemanatatime

Fred Wilson / AVC:

Fred Wilson to Senator Manchin: “Benefits of Bitcoin will be as important, impactful, and beneficial as that of the Internet” — A Letter To Senator Manchin — Senator Joe Manchin wrote a public letter to financial regulators asking them to “take appropriate action to limit …

More: The Switch, Union Square Ventures, Wall Street Journal, Feld Thoughts, Bloomberg View and Bitcoin Foundation

Tweets: @polemitis, @fredwilson and @bradusv

Andy Greenberg / Forbes:

Senator Calls For Bitcoin Ban In Letter To Financial Regulators

More: CNET, Business Insider, The Verge, TechCrunch, Mashable, Network World, SiliconANGLE, Inquirer, CoinDesk, ITworld.com, Mashable, Engadget, Ars Technica, Digital Trends, Techdirt, The Switch, newsBTC, MarketWatch and Business Insider

Tweets: @sen_joemanchin and @kashhill

Luke Baker / Reuters:

Europe invites Apple, Google to discuss ‘in-app’ purchases — (Reuters) - The European Commission announced plans on Thursday to tackle one of the scourges of the modern age - games on tablets and mobile phones that allow adults and children to rack up vast credit card bills by making “in-app” purchases.

More: EU Press Room, The Verge, MacRumors, Wall Street Journal, iPhone in Canada Blog, Gigaom, CNET, Dow Jones Newswires, iDownloadBlog.com …, bizjournals and MobileBurn.com

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Facebook Messenger for Windows will shut down on March 3 — Facebook today began prompting Facebook Messenger for Windows users with a message saying the app is shutting down next week. Without much of an explanation, the company plans to kill off Windows support for Facebook Messenger on March 3.

More: PC World, Engadget, TechnoBuffalo, Softpedia News, gHacks Technology News, SlashGear and AllFacebook. Thanks:@epro

Steven Brill / TIME:

How an ad-hoc team of outside coders and troubleshooters revived HealthCare.gov — Obama's Trauma Team — How an unlikely group of high-tech wizards revived Obama's troubled HealthCare.gov website — more than two weeks after the launch of HealthCare.gov—White House chief …

Tweets: @benlabolt

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

T-Mobile has turned every accepted practice in the mobile phone business on its head — T-Mobile Turns an Industry on Its Ear — A rash of consumer-friendliness has broken out across the mobile data industry. Over the last year, the four major carriers — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile …

More: Quartz. Tweets: @alexisohanian and @johnlegere

Greg Sterling / Marketing Land:

Pew's “The Web at 25”: 87% of Americans use the Internet, social media ranked easy to quit — Survey: Of Major Technologies, Social Media Is The Easiest To Give Up — Based on a new survey of just over 1,000 US adults, the Pew Research Center has released findings commemorating the 25th anniversary of the web.

More: Pew Internet, VatorNews, CNET, TechCrunch, PC World and Likeable Media

Harry McCracken / TIME:

Project Ara: Inside Google's Bold Gambit to Make Smartphones Modular — The two-year quest to create the ultimate customizable phone, inside and out. — On January 29, Google announced that it had agreed to sell Motorola, its phone-manufacturing business, to Chinese electronics giant Lenovo.

Eric Johnson / Re/code:

A Long Tail of Whales: Half of Mobile Games Money Comes From 0.15 Percent of Players — Oh, you've spent a couple dollars on Candy Crush? How cute. — In a mobile monetization report released today, app testing firm Swrve found that in January, half of free-to-play games' in-app purchases came from 0.15 percent of players.

More: VentureBeat, Inc.com, Joystiq, Guardian, Ubergizmo, destructoid and www.pocketgamer.biz. Tweets: @codinghorror

David Pierce / The Verge:

Moov is a fitness tracker that tells you how to improve your workouts — Meet Moov, the fitness tracker that turns Siri into your new personal trainer — Nikola Hu is running wrong. He's loping along, leaning back as he goes. Suddenly a voice emerges from his phone: “Your cadence is low.

More: TechCrunch, Engadget, Gizmodo, iMore, MacRumors, USA Today, Gigaom, Fortune, CNET, Co.Design, Ubergizmo, Pocket-lint, Mashable, Liliputing and SlashGear

Nancy Gohring / CITEworld:

With $50 million, ClearSlide will beef up analytics for salespeople — ClearSlide [1], the provider of services designed to help sales people better communicate with customers, just raised a whopping $50 million. It plans to use the funding to scale up and continue developing more analytics capabilities.

More: Gigaom, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, VatorNews, PE Hub Blog and silicontap.com. Thanks:@mattrosoff

Matthew Panzarino / TechCrunch:

Apple Launches Big Improvements For iOS Management Tools For Enterprise And Education — Apple has been busy in the IT department. Today, it released a slew of improvements and alterations to its large-scale deployment tools for education and enterprise customers.

More: Fraser Speirs, Ars Technica, iMore, Macworld, 9to5Mac, App Advice, The Loop, iDownloadBlog.com …, iPhone Hacks, AppleInsider, MacRumors and PalmAddict

Todd Spangler / Variety:

ABC will live-stream Oscars on web and mobile only to pay-TV subscribers in select markets — ABC Will Live-Stream Oscars to Web, Mobile Apps for First Time — But There's a Catch — Alphabet net to offer kudocast through Watch ABC apps and website, accessible only through certain pay-TV partners

More: The Verge, Engadget, TechHive, USA Today, CNET and Yahoo Tech. See also Mediagazer

David Kravets / Wired:

Feds Refuse to Release Public Comments on NSA Reform — Citing Privacy — The Obama administration has received 28 proposals from corporations with ideas for managing the NSA's massive database of U.S. phone call metadata. But don't expect to see the proposals anytime soon.

More: VentureBeat, The Switch and Wall Street Journal

Tweets: @thomas_drake1 and @jesselynradack

Stuart Dredge / Guardian:

Spotify and Ministry of Sound settle music playlists copyright lawsuit — Playlists based on dance brand's compilations will be removed from streaming service's search engine — Dance brand Ministry of Sound and streaming service Spotify have reached an “amicable” out-of-court settlement in their legal battle over music playlists.

More: Plagiarism Today and hypebot. See also Mediagazer

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch:

Bitcoin Startup Coinbase Surges Past 1M Consumer Wallets In The Post-Mt.Gox Era — Rumor: Brainwave-Sensing Startup InteraXon Was Approached By Google About An Acquisition — Today Coinbase announced that it has created more than 1 million consumer Bitcoin wallets on its platform …

More: The Coinbase Blog and The Next Web. Tweets: @mikegracen and @paulg

Douglas MacMillan / Wall Street Journal:

Marketing Chief Kathy Savitt's Star Rises at Yahoo — A management shake-up at Yahoo Inc. has conferred more power on Kathy Savitt, a marketing executive who has quickly risen to become one of Chief Executive Marissa Mayer's most prominent and trusted lieutenants.

More: bizjournals and GeekWire. Tweets: @wsjd. See also Mediagazer

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