Techmeme: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. (Eric Lichtblau/New York Times)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

July 7, 2013, 7:35 PM

Top News

Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:

In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A. — WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation's surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects …

More: Digital Trends, Network World and Boing Boing

Tweets: @ggreenwald, @dhh, @thijsniks, @mattblaze, @dhh, @richardson_mich and @csoghoian

Ezra Klein / Wonkblog:

Did you know John Roberts is also chief justice of the NSA's surveillance state? — Chief justice of the United States is a pretty big job. You lead the Supreme Court conferences where cases are discussed and voted on. You preside over oral arguments. When in the majority, you decide who writes the opinion.

Tweets: @benparr and @csoghoian

Washington Post:

Agreements with private companies protect U.S. access to cables' data for surveillance — The U.S. government had a problem: Spying in the digital age required access to the fiber-optic cables traversing the world's oceans, carrying torrents of data at the speed of light.

More: Wonkblog. Tweets: @peternotail and @zerocinemacom

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Microsoft Quietly Shuts Down MSN TV, Once Known as WebTV — Microsoft said that its MSN TV service will be closing down at the end of September, in a post on its Web site and in an email to users. — MSN TV, of course, was born of WebTV, which was thought up by well-known entrepreneur Steve Perlman.

More: The Verge, VentureBeat, Engadget, GeekWire, TechSpot and T3 News. Tweets: @zseward

Quentin Hardy / NYT Bits:

Technology Workers Are Young (Really Young) — It's well known that technology is a young man's game. Still, it is surprising to see just how young (and how male). — PayScale, a company based in Seattle, has determined that the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies …

More: ZDNet and Silicon Valley Watcher

Sarah Young / Reuters:

App developer Shazam gets $40 mln backing from tycoon Carlos Slim — (Reuters) - Smartphone app developer Shazam has found an unlikely ally in the form of Carlos Slim, one of the world's richest men, who is investing $40 million to back the development of the start-up best known for helping music fans identify catchy songs.

More: AllThingsD, CNET, TechCrunch, Sky News and Financial Times

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Apple testing Android-like local voice dictation for iOS — Apple is testing a local, offline version of Dictation voice input for iOS devices, according to strings of code found inside of the iOS 7 beta. The code, which was discovered by Hamza Sood, is located inside of both iOS 7 betas, but it is not present in iOS 6.

More: Business Insider, iDigitalTimes, iDownloadBlog.com, App Advice, iPhone Hacks, MacNN, iClarified, WebProNews and ifoAppleStore. Thanks:@madfruitstand

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

Samsung Cuts Its Forecast as Sales Growth Slows for Its Costliest Smartphones — Samsung Electronics may be having the same problem Apple has: nearly everyone in the world who can afford an expensive smartphone has one already. — Samsung, the largest maker of consumer electronics …

More: CNBC, BGR, Forbes, PC Magazine, Guardian, Fortune, iDownloadBlog.com, Forbes, TechCrunch, Forbes, Computerworld, 9to5Google, The Register and The Verge

Emily Chung / CBC News:

Ultrafast internet service launched by Vancouver start-up — OneGigabit to offer Google Fiber-like internet speeds for $45 to $65 a month — A new Vancouver-based internet provider says it will be offering fibre internet at a speed of one gigabit per second — 60 times faster than the Canadian average …

More: VentureBeat, FierceCable, 9.blog, DSLreports and The Verge

Chris O'Brien / Los Angeles Times:

Bitcoin community reacts to Winklevoss public offering plans — Tyler Winkelvoss, left, and his twin, Cameron Winklevoss, want to give investors a piece of the Bitcoin virtual currency. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times / February 9, 2010) — The Winklevoss twins earlier this week confirmed plans …

Andy / TorrentFreak:

RIAA Hits 25 Million Google Takedowns, Web Blocking Making Things Worse — Back in May the RIAA reached a historic milestone in its quest to remove copyright-infringing links from the Internet. — The music industry group asked Google to remove the 20 millionth URL from its indexes …

More: PC Magazine, Gizmodo, I4U News and Softpedia News

Jonathan Watts / Guardian:

Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia offer asylum to Edward Snowden — President Maduro offers to protect NSA whistleblower ‘from persecution by the empire’ and rejects US extradition request — Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower …

More: CNN, BBC, USA Today, The Big Story, Reuters, ABC News, The Independent, The Seattle Times, Associated Press, WL Central, RT and World News

Tweets: @ggreenwald, @dhh and @wikileaks

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 7:35 PM ET, July 7, 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.