VENTURE CAPITAL POST

The Irish court orders to investigate Facebook's transferring of European user's data to the United States. This is to ensure that the European user's privacy was protected from the U.S. surveillance.

The Obama administration has again invited Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff for a state visit to Washington, a diplomatic breakthrough that both sides hope will lead over time to greater trade between the two biggest economies in the Americas.

China has dropped some of the world's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, while approving thousands more locally made products, in what some say is a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.

China and "probably one or two" other countries have the ability to invade and possibly shut down computer systems of U.S. power utilities, aviation networks and financial companies, Admiral Mike Rogers, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency, said on Thursday.

The federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants the cooperation of California officials in searching residents' cellphone and computer records, under a bill making its way through the state legislature.

California-based Synack, a crowdsourced platform for hacking into customers' security holes, raises $7.5 million for a series A funding round.

Maryland, US-based software cybersecurity firm HackSurfer bagged $3.5 million in a recent funding round to provide better cloud-based enterprise data protection for its customers from both private and government sectors.

Heads of the six biggest Internet companies in the US met with President Barack Obama and senior White House aides to talk about the government's data collection practices, Reuters reported.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has approved two of President Barack Obama's proposed changes on the National Security Agency's surveillance of US telecommunications, VentureBeat reported.

Secret British spy unit Joint Threat Research Intelligent Group (JTRIG) launched a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on US-based hacktivist group Anonymous' Internet chat rooms, according to leaked NSA documents obtained by NBC News.

California, US-based security company FireEye purchased Virginia-based firm Mandiant for $1 billion in the biggest security deal of 2013.

The Louisiana Sheriffs' Pension and Relief Fund sued IBM for its cooperation with the National Security Agency over a spying program that allegedly hurt investors, Bloomberg reported.

A US SEC filing by big data company Palantir revealed that it was set to do a USD57.5 million fundraising three months after it had raised USD195.5 million in an earlier funding round.

3 U.S Senators published an op-ed in the New York Times today, questioning on why American citizens were not able to have the knowledge to challenge the infringement of their privacy rights.

The New York Times cited reports that have suggested that Level 3 Communications, which controls most of the fiber optic cables that connect everyone to the Internet, may have greenlighted the NSA to tap data from Yahoo and Google. Both companies have announced that they will now start encrypting their data.