"In a small number of countries, the law dictates that specific agencies and authorities must have direct access to an operator's network, bypassing any form of operational control over lawful interception on the part of the operator," the report said.

Vodafone also noted ominously that “several countries empower agencies and authorities to require the disclosure of the encryption ‘keys’ needed to decrypt data. Non-compliance is a criminal offense."

The National Security Agency is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents.

The agency intercepts “millions of images per day” — including about 55,000 “facial recognition quality images” — which translate into “tremendous untapped potential,” according to 2011 documents obtained from the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

An emerging trend, called “dark social”, is threatening to upset the social media establishment dominated by Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google.

Up to 80 per cent of all “sharing” of publisher and brand content is being distributed through email and text messaging to smaller, “off-the-grid” user networks.

“There’s a big world of sharing going on out there which is not being dictated by social media,” RadiumOne Asia-Pacific managing director Kerry McCabe said.

A homemade Lithuanian drone was reportedly being used to smuggle cigarettes into Russia, meaning that organized crime has beaten Amazon to the punch in the quest to deliver desirable products to customers aerially.

he reported scale of this operation is pretty impressive—according to ITAR-TASS, the drone had a wingspan of roughly 12 feet, and could carry 22 pounds of cigarettes, which is a whole lot of pounds of cigarettes.

In 2006, Massachusetts began requiring health insurance coverage for nearly all residents – years before the rest of the country. Now a study shows that after the reforms went into effect, the state saw a 2.9 per cent decrease in the death rate through 2010.

In 2006, Massachusetts began requiring health insurance coverage for nearly all residents – years before the rest of the country. Now a study shows that after the reforms went into effect, the state saw a 2.9 per cent decrease in the death rate through 2010.

The girls were taken from their school in Borno state by suspected Islamist militants more than two weeks ago.

It is thought that the militants initially took the girls to the Sambisa forest; there have been subsequent reports they have been taken over the borders into Chad and Cameroon and possibly forced to "marry" the insurgents.

King ended its first day of trading down 15.56 percent from its opening value. That's the worst first-day performance for a major US IPO in the last 15 years, according to an analysis by Rennaisance Capital.

But the company has yet to diversify its revenue away from the breakout hit of Candy Crush, which represented a full 78 percent of King's gross bookings in the last quarter of 2013, despite heavy efforts to promote other titles through TV advertising and other means.

As a partnership between CBS Consumer Products and the Federation of Beer, the fuel of a thousand warrior victory celebrations will arrive on pre-Federation Earth as a Dunkelweizen with an ABV of 5.5% and “a modern aroma [of] predominantly mild banana and clove.”

With 150,000 employees and €28 billion ($38.6 billion) in annual revenues, the company is the world's second largest network equipment supplier. At the beginning of 2009, the NSA began an extensive operation, referred to internally as "Shotgiant," against the company, which is considered a major competitor to US-based Cisco.

According to a top secret NSA presentation, NSA workers not only succeeded in accessing the email archive, but also the secret source code of individual Huwaei products. Software source code is the holy grail of computer companies.

In a statement, Huawei spokesman Bill Plummer criticized the spying measures. "If it is true, the irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us," he said.

It has taken time to identify the correct search areas, Razak says, because it is now clear to investigators that the radar transponders and the flight data transmission system in the missing Malaysian airliner were deliberately disabled by somebody on the aircraft trying to hide its position and heading.

In other words somebody who knew what they were doing - or who may have been forcing a pilot to do it - was trying to obscure the plane's position. But Rezak stops short of saying this means the plane was necessarily hijacked.