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Trump’s call to ban Muslims draws fire on social media

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By Angela Moon and Melissa Fares NEW YORK (Reuters) – Republican presidential contender Donald Trump’s demand that the U.S. stop allowing Muslims into the United States lit up social media on Tuesday, as critics of the proposal around the world took to Twitter and Facebook to express their outrage. Outside of the United States, there were about 4.2 negative mentions for every positive one on social media regarding Trump, according to data provided by Zoomph, an analytics platform that tracks and aggregates social media mentions

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AT&T CEO hints at launching mobile video streaming service

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AT&T Inc Chief Executive Randall Stephenson on Tuesday hinted at launching a mobile video streaming service as early as January to target price-conscious U.S. viewers who don't currently have pay-TV subscriptions. AT&T is interested in putting together a content bundle that can be viewed on a smaller screen, or to a single screen in a home that's not set-top box-driven, Stephenson said

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Obama appeals to Silicon Valley for help with online anti-extremist campaign

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By Roberta Rampton and Dustin Volz WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Sunday called on Silicon Valley to help address the threat of militant groups using social media and electronic communications to plan and promote violence, setting up renewed debate over personal privacy online. “I will urge high-tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder for terrorists to use technology to escape from justice,” Obama said in a televised Oval Office speech

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Obama urges tech, law enforcement to address social media used for plots

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The White House is urging Silicon Valley to help address the threat posed by militant groups by restricting the use of social media for planning and promoting violence, a senior administration official said on Sunday. In coming days, the White House will talk to companies in the tech sector about developing a “clearer understanding of when we believe social media is being used actively and operationally to promote terrorism,” said the official, speaking on background

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Shootings sharpen debate on U.S. electronic surveillance powers

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The San Bernardino shootings are reviving a debate about Washington's digital surveillance effort to find and capture violent extremists, with the recent shutdown of a U.S. cellphone spying program coming under renewed criticism. The debate is long-running and pits a huge and powerful national security apparatus against privacy and civil rights activists, who prevailed recently on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of cellphone metadata.

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VTech hack exposes ID theft risk in connecting kids to Internet

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By Jim Finkle and Jeremy Wagstaff BOSTON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Parents who gave their child a Kidizoom smartwatch or a VTech InnoTab tablet may have exposed them to identity theft after Hong Kong-based VTech said hackers stole the personal information of more than 6 million children. Shipments of toys that connect to the Internet will rise 200 percent over the next five years, according to estimates by UK-based Juniper Research. It's not clear what the motive was for the VTech breach nor whether it has resulted in any identity theft so far

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Social media companies step up battle against militant propaganda

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By Joseph Menn SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook, Google and Twitter are stepping up efforts to combat online propaganda and recruiting by Islamic militants, but the Internet companies are doing it quietly to avoid the perception that they are helping the authorities police the Web. On Friday, Facebook Inc said it took down a profile that the company believed belonged to San Bernardino shooter Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband is accused of killing 14 people in a mass shooting that the FBI is investigating as an “act of terrorism.” Just a day earlier, the French prime minister and European Commission officials met separately with Facebook, Google, Twitter Inc and other companies to demand faster action on what the commission called “online terrorism incitement and hate speech.” The Internet companies described their policies as straightforward: they ban certain types of content in accordance with their own terms of service, and require court orders to remove or block anything beyond that.

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Praise for Islamic State posted during shooting to suspect’s Facebook page

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(Reuters) – Comments praising the Islamic State were posted during the California shooting to a Facebook page established by the woman accused of helping to kill 14 people, a Facebook Inc spokesman said on Friday. The Facebook profile, established under an alias by Tashfeen Malik, was removed by the company on Thursday for violating its community standards, which prohibit praise or promotion of “acts of terror,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be named.

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Exclusive: Investigators piece together portrait of Pakistani woman in shooting massacre

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Tashfeen Malik's path to accused mass killer in California began in a small city on the Indus River in Pakistan's Punjab province. It was from here, when she was a toddler, that she moved with her father Gulzar 25 years ago to Saudi Arabia, where he became more deeply religious, more conservative and more hardline, according to a family member.

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