Techmeme: GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications (Guardian)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

June 21, 2013, 7:00 PM

Top News

Facebook Security:

Important Message from Facebook's White Hat Program — At Facebook, we take people's privacy seriously, and we strive to protect people's information to the very best of our ability. We implement many safeguards, hire the brightest engineers and train them to ensure we have only high-quality code behind …

More: The Verge, AllThingsD, Engadget, GigaOM, The Register, TechHive, The Technology Chronicles, ZDNet, ReadWrite, The Next Web, iMore, Lifehacker, Mashable, SlashGear, bizjournals and Deadline.com

Tweets: @evelynrusli and @mattbuchanan

Billy Gallagher / TechCrunch:

Facebook Security Bug Exposed Personal Account Information, Emails And Phone Numbers, Six Million Accounts Affected — A Facebook security bug exposed users' personal contact information (email or phone number) to other users who were connected to them; the bug has affected 6 million accounts.

More: CNET, VentureBeat, AppleInsider, Digits, Business Insider and Gizmodo

Guardian:

GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications — Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal

More: The Next Web, Gizmodo, CNET, Associated Press, Computerworld, The Register, Techdirt, Ars Technica, Mashable, The Verge, dailywireless.org, VentureBeat and TechCrunch

Tweets: @alex, @kurtopsahl, @chilko and @declanm

See also Mediagazer

Washington Post:

U.S. charges Snowden with espionage — Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain …

More: The Next Web and The Verge. See also Mediagazer

Andy Pasztor / Wall Street Journal:

FAA to Relax Rules for Gadgets in Flight — Airline passengers irritated at having to turn off their devices could soon see some reprieve, with regulators set to allow wider use of gadgets in flight. — The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to relax the ban on using some types …

More: NYT Bits, BGR, Los Angeles Times, GigaOM, VentureBeat, Examiner, Quartz, Associated Press, DSLreports, PC Magazine, ReadWrite, PadGadget, Network World, The Verge, Fortune, TechPolitik, SlashGear, CNET, Ars Technica, Electronista, GeekWire, Gizmodo and Softpedia News

Tweets: @digiphile, @levie and @rafat

Harrison Weber / The Next Web:

AOL is launching a Google Reader replacement Monday: ‘All your favorite websites, in one place’ — As the end of Google Reader nears, AOL is planning to announce its own alternative to the service: “AOL Reader.” — As you can see on the current landing page for the service, which is public …

More: Engadget, eWeek, PC Magazine, CNET, Betabeat, The Digital Reader, 9to5Mac, AllThingsD, Gizmodo, The Verge, PC World, iDownloadBlog.com, Macgasm, Pocket-lint, Mashable and SlashGear. Tweets: @hunterwalk. See also Mediagazer

Jennifer Van Grove / CNET:

Instagram users upload 5M videos in first 24 hours — Just a day after release, video sharing is already proving so popular an activity on the app that it would take you years to watch all the clips uploaded to the service. — Instagram users have embraced the application's …

More: VentureBeat, Digital Trends, TechCrunch, The Next Web, Examiner, AllFacebook, 9to5Google, iDownloadBlog.com, Cult of Mac, IntoMobile, App Advice and WebProNews

Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:

HTC Said to Hire Robert Downey Jr. for $12 Million Ad Campaign — HTC has enlisted actor Robert Downey Jr. for a two-year global marketing deal worth about $12 million to promote the Taiwanese company's smartphone brand, according to two people with knowledge of the plans.

More: Examiner, The Verge, Pocketables, Pocketnow, Electronista, Internet2Go, VentureBeat, SlashGear, Android Community, TechEye, Engadget, Yahoo! News, CNET, Business Insider, TechCrunch and The Verge

Matt Brian / The Verge:

HTC slashed executive pay by half after disappointing 2012

More: Wall Street Journal, BGR, SlashGear, CNET and Mashable

Jordan Golson / MacRumors:

Apple Board Modifies Tim Cook CEO Bonus Stock Award to Be More Performance Based — Apple's Board of Directors has elected to modify the award of restricted stock that Tim Cook's received after being promoted to CEO in August 2011. The modification, made at Cook's request …

More: 9to5Mac, GigaOM, AllThingsD, Digits and Reuters

Alex Chitu / Google Operating System:

Google Mine — Google prepares a new service that's called Google Mine. It's integrated with Google+ and it's a way to keep track of the items you own and share some of them with your circles. Right now, the service is tested internally at Google. — “Google Mine lets you share …

More: Digital Trends, PandoDaily, Ars Technica, Engadget, CNET, bizjournals, Marketing Land, SocialTimes, Pocket-lint, WebProNews, Android Community and 9to5Google

Tweets: @caseynewton and @jwherrman

Thanks:@arpitnext

Daniel Eran Dilger / AppleInsider:

Apple now charting App Store iOS fragmentation just like Google's Android — After first announcing that 93 percent of App Store customers are using the latest iOS 6 at WWDC last week, Apple has added the chart to its public developer site, mirroring Google's reporting of Android users in Google Play.

Cotton Delo / AdAge:

Twitter is Developing Geo-Targeted Ads for Retailers — Twitter Is Playing Catch-Up to Facebook On Location-Based Ads — As soon as the end of the year, Twitter is planning to let brands show promoted tweets to people who open its mobile apps within close range of their stores.

More: Marketing Land, Engadget, WebProNews, Business Insider and TechCrunch

Seth Weintraub / 9to5Mac:

iPhone 5 coming to Virgin Mobile next Friday for $549.99 with unlimited plans starting at $30/month — We've just received word that Virgin Mobile will be carrying the iPhone 5 next week on its Beyond Talk plans with unlimited 3G/4G LTE data and messaging starting at $35/month (with $5 discount for auto-payments).

More: AppleInsider, SlashGear, Computerworld, IntoMobile, TechSpot, iMore, Macworld, Electronista, BGR, MacRumors, TUAW, CNET, GigaOM, Gotta Be Mobile, Macgasm, AllThingsD, iPhone Hacks, WebProNews, iLounge and Examiner. Thanks:@apollozac

Nobuhiro Kubo / Reuters:

Tokyo court says Samsung infringed on Apple “bounce-back” patent — (Reuters) - A Tokyo court ruled on Friday that Samsung Electronics Co Ltd had infringed on rival Apple Inc's patent for a “bounce-back” feature on earlier models of its popular smartphones.

More: Inquirer, Forbes, PadGadget, MacRumors, BGR, Phones Review, iPhone in Canada Blog, Macgasm, Digital Media Wire, The Register, SlashGear and The Next Web

Nick Summers / The Next Web:

Kickstarter apologizes for failing to remove a seduction guide funded on its site: ‘We were wrong’ — The team behind the creative crowdfunding site Kickstarter has explained why it didn't cancel a project offering backers a step-by-step guide to seducing women.

More: The Kickstarter Blog, Businessweek, Mashable, VatorNews, Betabeat, PandoDaily and AllThingsD. Tweets: @jbrodkin

Jordan Golson / MacRumors:

First Trailer for Ashton Kutcher's ‘Jobs’ Released — The first trailer for Ashton Kutcher's ‘Jobs’ was released earlier today, giving the wider public its first glimpse at the movie after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to mixed reviews earlier this year.

More: AppleInsider, Betabeat, GeekWire, CNET, VentureBeat, PhoneArena, IntoMobile, The Verge and Pocketnow

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

Microsoft debuts Bing Boards, user-created collections of images, videos, and links to complement its algorithms — Microsoft today announced a new experiment called Bing Boards, a “way for passionate people to create highly specialized content” specifically for search.

More: TechCrunch, LiveSide.net, Engadget, PC World and Neowin

Nicholas Vinocur / Reuters:

France to seek ban on Amazon bundled discounts, free delivery — (Reuters) - France's Socialist government aims to introduce a law preventing online retailer Amazon from offering both discounts and free delivery for books in France, the culture minister said, arguing this amounts to unfair competition.

More: Business Insider, TechNewsWorld, Businessweek, The Next Web and Mashable. See also Mediagazer

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Facebook Announces That It's Out Of Ideas — How the internet's most powerful company became a clone mill. — Via: Macey J. Foronda/Buzzfeed — The most important thing to understand about Facebook is that it can't lose. It has, and it will, and sometimes it should. But it can't.

More: PandoDaily, Slate, ZDNet, Inc.com, memeburn and Forbes. See also Mediagazer

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Why I will never click on your Instagram video, no matter how much you want me to

More: Gizmodo, TechHive, eWeek, Inc.com, PC Magazine, CNET, The Atlantic Wire, MobileSyrup.com and iPhone

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Cloudflare:

Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.

Zoho:

Step into smarter meetings: Zoho Cliq Rooms is now available on Neat devices — The meeting landscape has completely transformed over the last few years, moving from conference rooms to people joining across locations and time zones.

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Acquired:

The Home Depot

Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.

Subscribe to Acquired.

Big Technology Podcast:

Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Sources:

Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Lenny's Podcast:

How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)

Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.

Invest Like the Best:

Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 7:00 PM ET, June 21, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.