Techmeme: White House defends NSA phone records collection as ‘critical tool’ (Guardian)

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June 6, 2013, 1:50 PM

Top News

Glenn Greenwald / Guardian:

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily — Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama — • Read the Verizon court order in full here — • Obama administration justifies surveillance

More: Digits, Electronic Frontier Foundation, ZDNet, Associated Press, Guardian, AllThingsD, New York Times, Reuters, The Next Web, Examiner, Business Insider, Errata Security, Ars Technica, Network World, DSLreports, Help Net Security, BuzzFeed, Tech Trader Daily, Business Insider, Forbes, BGR, VentureBeat, TechSpot, TechCrunch, Tech.pinions, SiliconBeat, TechPolitik, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk, Guardian, Wired, FierceEnterpriseCommunications …, Fox News, FierceWireless, Techdirt, Droid Life, Mashable, CNET, Quartz, The Mac Observer, dailywireless.org, BetaNews, Gizmodo, Forbes, iDownloadBlog.com, Electronista, Softpedia News, TechEye, The CIO Report, Neowin, Marketing Pilgrim, TechPresident, WebProNews, Boing Boing, App Advice, iMore, IntoMobile, SiliconANGLE, Of Interest, Digital Trends, The Raw Story, Inquirer and BBC

Tweets: @jaketapper, @willmcavoyacn, @davidcorndc, @mattbuchanan, @nikcub and @csoghoian

See also Mediagazer

Guardian:

White House defends NSA phone records collection as ‘critical tool’ — Obama administration says order is ‘critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats’ as senior politicians condemn surveillance — • Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

More: Hillicon Valley, The Week Magazine, Gizmodo, AllThingsD, DSLreports, CNET, The Verge, VentureBeat, Post Politics, Techdirt, Mashable and SlashGear

Anna Palmer / Politico:

Verizon on offense behind the scenes — Officially, telecom giant Verizon has no comment about turning over millions of customers call logs to the government. — But behind the scenes, the company is vetting requests from senior Capitol Hill aides and others, asking Obama administration officials …

More: The Verge

Ellen Nakashima / Washington Post:

Verizon providing all call records to U.S. under court order

Peter Kafka / AllThingsD:

Twitter Signs Its Second Big Ad Deal, This Time With WPP — In April, Twitter linked up with ad giant Starcom in a deal worth “hundreds of millions” over a few years. Now it has another one, with Starcom's rival WPP. — WPP's press release doesn't mention a dollar value …

More: WPP, AdExchanger, VatorNews, Businessweek, GigaOM, Bloomberg, AdAge, Marketing Land, The Next Web, Guardian, Softpedia News and memeburn

Steve Kovach / Business Insider:

BBM Is Not Coming To iPhone And Android On June 27 — There's a report spreading around today that BBM is coming to iPhones and Android devices on June 27. — The report is based on a tweet from T-Mobile's UK account, but the tweet has been deleted. — According to a source with knowledge …

More: Engadget, TechCrunch, CNET, SlashGear, Digital Trends, iMore, 9to5Mac, Inquirer, The Verge, CrackBerry.com, MobileSyrup.com, LaptopMemo, IntoMobile and iDownloadBlog.com. Tweets: @markgurman

Roger Cheng / CNET:

BlackBerry in talks to preload BBM on rival handsets

More: AppleInsider, MacRumors, BGR, Pocketnow, Digital Trends, Gotta Be Mobile, AndroidOS.in, ValueWalk and ZDNet

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

AT&T Discusses Entering Into a Joint Bid for Hulu With Chernin Group — According to sources close to the telecommunications giant, AT&T is in discussions with the Chernin Group about mounting a joint bid to acquire the Hulu premium video site. — It makes sense — in addition to its core phone business …

More: GigaOM, CNET, VentureBeat, DSLreports, Forbes, BGR, FierceWireless, TechCrunch and VatorNews. See also Mediagazer

Christina Bonnington / Wired:

Why Google Reader Really Got the Axe — When Google announced its plans to shutter Google Reader in March, the Internet freaked out. Twitter users raised their virtual pitchforks in outrage. Bloggers wept, scrambling to find a suitable replacement by the service's July 1 death date.

More: GigaOM, Business Insider, 9to5Google, The Verge, Gizmodo, SlashGear and PhoneArena

Andrew Sinkov / Evernote Blog:

Evernote Reminders Arrive on Android — Reminders, our most requested feature of all time, is now available on Android! With Reminders you get three great features all rolled into one: alarms, note based to-dos and the ability to pin notes to the top of your note list. Let's take a closer look.

More: The Next Web, Engadget, ZDNet, The Verge, AndroidGuys and SlashGear

Spencer E. Ante / Wall Street Journal:

3-D Printer Firm MakerBot in Acquisition Talks — MakerBot Industries LLC, the fast-growing maker of 3-D printers, is in talks with suitors that could lead to the sale of the New York-based company, people familiar with the matter said. — The four-year-old startup was recently gauging …

More: Betabeat, Business Insider, Quartz and CNET

Aaron Souppouris / The Verge:

Samsung Galaxy S4 update addresses storage complaints with move to SD card feature — Samsung has begun rolling out a software update for its Galaxy S4 that adresses a few issues early adopters have been complaining about. The 16GB variant of the Galaxy S4 has been slammed for only giving users 9.15GB …

More: SamMobile, GigaOM, ZDNet, 9to5Google, CNET, IntoMobile, Phones Review, Fudzilla, Inquirer, Softpedia News, BGR India, Unwired View, Mashable, SlashGear, Ubergizmo, Pocketnow, Gotta Be Mobile and MobileSyrup.com

Rebecca Grant / VentureBeat:

Ayla launches with $5.4M to turn everything into a connected device — A world where humans interact with machines that respond to our every need may seem fantastical, but Ayla Networks launched today to make this sci-fi vision a reality. — Ayla's mission is to build an ecosystem for the Internet of Things.

More: NYT Bits and Data Center Knowledge

Brian Womack / Bloomberg:

Google's YouTube Triples Mobile Sales Amid Wireless Shift — Google Scores YouTube Mobile Ad Sales Jackpot — Google Inc. (GOOG)'s YouTube has tripled advertising sales on mobile devices in the past six months, the company said, contributing as much as an estimated $350 million to revenue at the video-sharing website.

More: The Verge, Mobile Marketing Watch, Marketing Land, 9to5Mac, Business Insider, everythingiCafe, Cult of Mac and memeburn

Christina Farr / VentureBeat:

Box rolls out new revenue-share plan, SDKs to help its app partners make money — Cloud storage player Box plans to split revenues with the developers writing apps for its storage and collaboration platform. — Box is focused on business customers rather than consumers …

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web, ZDNet, ReadWrite, GigaOM and CNET

Jon Russell / The Next Web:

Tango launches Asia-style games platform for its 120m users, snags Gameloft as a launch partner — Video messaging service Tango has taken a big step into the mobile entertainment and gaming space after it launched a new content platform for developers, alongside launch partner Gameloft.

More: GigaOM, Engadget, 9to5Mac, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Jordan Crook / TechCrunch:

Snapchat Launches v5.0 With Revamped UI, Swipe Navigation, And In-App Profiles — Snapchat, the app that lets you send pics and videos that self-destruct, has just released a huge update to version 5.0 “Banquo” (I'll get to that in a minute), which includes a dramatic revamp of the app's UI.

More: The Verge

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:

Russia's Yandex Has A New Take On Search Results, Take Action Inside The Page — With Google dominant in so many markets, one would thing that search is kind've ‘done’. Of course, we have yet to really tap into social search, and Facebook Graph search is showing a clear direction.

More: Yandex.Company, WebProNews, GigaOM, The Next Web and Softpedia News

Jim Finkle / Reuters:

Exclusive: Microsoft, FBI take aim at global cyber crime ring — (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp and the FBI, aided by authorities in more than 80 countries, have launched a major assault on one of the world's biggest cyber crime rings, believed to have stolen more than $500 million from bank accounts over the past 18 months.

More: GeekWire, Geek.com, Inquirer, ValueWalk, SiliconANGLE, The Verge, The Register and SlashGear

Somini Sengupta / New York Times:

Countries Seek Entrepreneurs From Silicon Valley — SAN FRANCISCO — A bold new billboard looms over U.S. 101, the highway that runs through the heart of the global technology industry. “H-1b problems?” it reads. “Pivot to Canada.” — That sassy invitation is directed at the thousands …

More: Venture Capital Dispatch

Alex Wilhelm / The Next Web:

N3twork raises a $12M Series A led by Kleiner Perkins to build an Internet based on your interests — Today N3twork announced that it has raised a $12 million Series A round of funding, led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, and participated in by Floodgate, and Google Ventures.

More: AllThingsD, TechCrunch, bizjournals and GigaOM

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

MacBook Air refresh looks set for WWDC, potentially with faster Wi-Fi — Apple appears set to release new versions of its MacBook Air notebook computer at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference, according to information provided by a source. Earlier this week, we reported that Apple …

More: iMore, GigaOM, Ubergizmo, Macworld, www.idigitaltimes.co.uk and Gizmodo. Thanks:@llsethj

Shara Tibken / CNET:

Focus, criticism shifts to Amazon in Apple e-book trial — The online retailing giant is accused of being a bully by two publishing company CEOs who testified during the trial. — NEW YORK — Amazon acted like a bully and threatened the publishers when discussing a new e-book sales structure …

More: Reuters, AllThingsD, AppleInsider, Macgasm, paidContent, MacDailyNews and MacNN. See also Mediagazer

John Paczkowski / AllThingsD:

Apple Says Differences in Publisher Deals Belie E-Book Conspiracy Charges

More: GeekWire, The Register and Fortune. See also Mediagazer

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