In a bid to allay global outrage after the leak of the United States snooping programme, President Barack Obama has put an end to the surveillance of "foreign leaders of friendly nations" but ruled out scrapping the controversial programme altogether.
The government is expected to route all its official communication through the official website National Informatics Centre's email service.
The two leaders said they would work to "bring them (bilateral ties) to the framework of constructive cooperation.
If the US's National Security Agency is to be believed, as early as 2008 a probe into the porn viewing habits of terrorists revealed that coded messages were being sent through porn videos.
United States technology companies have become the command and control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, one of Britain's senior-most intelligence chiefs has warned and sought their cooperation in intelligence matters to tackle the menace.
British police have detained the live-in partner of a Guardian journalist responsible for leaking reports on US surveillance programme for nine hours under terror laws, prompting Indian-origin lawmaker Keith Vaz to seek an explanation from Scotland Yard on the issue.
Germany has accused the United States of lying about its surveillance operations in the European country and claimed there are "new indications" that Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone was monitored by the Americans.
Nineteen US organisations have filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency, claiming that its secretive internet and telephone surveillance program violates the constitution.
The White House has not spelt out regulatory or legislative steps.
A secret document provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals that only 1 billion of the 1.35 intercepts that the US snooped on are terror related, the rest a breach of privacy. Vicky Nanjappa reports
The US-based firm, however said it does not have any direct evidence of customer data being breached illegally by the government.
Germany's foreign ministry has called in British Ambassador Simon MacDonald to demand an explanation over allegations that his mission in Berlin is operating a "secret listening post" to spy on the German government.
Expressing outrage over reports that it is the most closely watched country in Europe under a United States spying programme, Germany today said eavesdropping on allies is "completely unacceptable" and demanded full details of the surveillance.
American intelligence service used bugs, phone taps and cybermonitoring to obtain information from European Union embassies and offices in Washington, New York and Brussels, a German weekly reported on Sunday.
The United States has asserted that it will continue to gather foreign intelligence, which it argued is essential to keep the nation and allies safe, amid report that National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders.
The National Security Agency lost its authority to collect the phone records of millions of Americans, thanks to a new reform measure Congress passed on Tuesday
Even if the Mumbai police gets to seek the e-mails, it might not bring positive results.
The documents shed new light on how the government dealt with US Internet companies that were reluctant to comply with orders from the secretive US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which rules on government requests to conduct surveillance for national security issues.
The United States has named former tennis star Billie Jean King, one of the first prominent athletes to publicly acknowledge her homosexuality, to be in the U.S. delegation to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, where Russia's anti-gay policies have stirred controversy.
Rediff.com tries to recap the debate and presents the highlights from the event.
From Aurangzeb to Sangh Parivar, the year 2016 offers plenty of hope in historical and modern literature.
'Handled poorly, it could either lead to a witch-hunt in organisations that is fertile soil for yes-men; or lead to even bona fide decisions and entire organisational systems being held to ransom,' says Somasekhar Sundaresan.
American tech giants Microsoft and Facebook have disclosed the number of requests they had received from the US National Security Agency to reveal details, including internet usage of their consumers.
It is important to track what is happening in the rest of the world to be able to develop in India the best possible protection for citizens' fundamental right to privacy -- becoming for a country which prides itself on being the largest functioning democracy in the world.
Apple Inc has said it will issue a software update very soon to cut off the ability of spies and hackers to grab email and other sensitive data from Mac computers.
Over the last few days there has been a constant scrutiny over Facebook having access to your SMS. Buried within the latest update for Facebook's Android app is a feature that is causing growing concern among some users.
In an investigative story, the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday said that the officials of National Security Agency are "angry" on the assertions being made by the White House that Obama was not aware about its surveillance of foreign leaders.
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Apple and Google adopted strong default encryption in late 2014.
Security researchers with Kaspersky Lab have recorded more than 45,000 attacks in 99 countries, including the UK, Russia, Ukraine, India, China, Italy, and Egypt.
The US National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation spied on five prominent Muslim-American activists, including an Indian-origin attorney, according to the leaked documents which showed use of objectionable religious slurs against these individuals.
His epic public takedown of actor Dustin Hoffman is just the beginning.
Today, the biggest challenge for any state is to evolve indigenous hardware options. It is important for the states like Germany, India etc to increase their stakes in the global IT setup and this could allow them to control the US domination, says Ajey Lele.
For the first time in our political history, Pakistan has become centre stage of the incumbent's campaign, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Sadly, governments and their agencies can't be trusted to use private data, or decryption methods responsibly, says Devangshu Dutta.
Despite the Indian government's recent efforts anecdotal evidence indicates that there has been little change in the extortionist behaviour of a significant proportion of tax and police officials, says Jaimini Bhagwati.
Stock options can be a source of tremendous wealth, so don't overlook them in a divorce.
'Analysts see BECA as a 'force multiplier' for India.' 'But China too is known to have such capabilities.' 'The military gap with China will continue to remain a fact of life, BECA notwithstanding,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar
'A breakthrough in eastern Ladakh leading to disengagement and creation of a buffer zone will obviate the need of military deployment through the winter months ahead,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The United States, which spends billions monitoring adversaries like Al Qaeda, North Korea and Iran, pays an equal amount of attention on ally Pakistan and has ramped up surveillance of its nuclear arms, according to a report.
Snooping is one of the oldest peccadilloes of man, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
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