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“We have transitioned into a world where law enforcement is hacking into people’s computers, and we have never had public debate,” said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Judges are having to make up these powers as they go along.” Former U.S. officials say the FBI uses the technique sparingly, in part to keep public references to its online surveillance tools to a minimum. There was news coverage about them in 2007, when Wired reported that the FBI had sent surveillance software to the owner of a MySpace account linked to bomb threats against a Washington state high school. The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years, and has used that technique mainly in terrorism cases or the most serious criminal investigations, said Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, now on the advisory board of Subsentio, a firm that helps telecommunications carriers comply with federal wiretap statutes.

The company has told a number of developers behind Bitcoin-related apps that their apps contain content -- or facilitate, enable, or encourage an activity -- "that is not legal in all the locations in which the app is available, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines."

RT @TechCrunch: How Does Apple Really Feel About Bitcoin? by @panzer

RT @gigaom: The persecution of Apple: is the ebook investigation out of control?

RT @TechCrunch: Catchbox Is A Throwable Microphone To Get The Audience Talking by @sohear

RT @Techmeme: Promotion in the App Store (@monkbent / stratechery)

RT @Techmeme: Promotion in the App Store (@monkbent / stratechery)

RT @gigaom: Apple's "12 Days of Digital Gifts" goes live, finally including the U.S.

We learned more about it last Tuesday. Facebook announced that it would start highlighting “high-quality” content (which explains the jump in traffic to publishers), and start promoting less often externally hosted image macros and “meme photos.” It touted these changes by showing what an article from The Atlantic looks like in a user’s News Feed. (Which, by the way, is great! This writer, at least, is excited at the prospect of more Facebook visitors.)

RT @Techmeme: Dell joins the Chromebook club with the Dell Chromebook 11 (@danackerman / CNET)

RT @Techmeme: Dell joins the Chromebook club with the Dell Chromebook 11 (@danackerman / CNET)

One decision Google made about this new version is unexpected: It only affects new spreadsheets you create. Old ones still show up in the old format, and can’t take advantage of new features like offline editing. That complicates matters if you want to share spreadsheets with someone who isn’t using the new version. (For now, you opt into the upgrade in your Google Drive settings.)

Google plans to expand Chromecast in 2014

What The Heck Will Google Do With These Scary Military Robots?

China successfully lands spacecraft on Moon

How Facebook's New Machine Brain Will Learn All About You From Your Photos

On Second Thought …

As Google slowly preps the Chromecast ecosystem, waves of new apps are on the way

Netflix says Netherlands has the fastest broadband

Now San Francisco is taking another shot at that goal and is going it alone, at least for now. On Monday, the city will turn on free outdoor Wi-Fi along Market Street, the city’s main drag, all the way from the central Castro District down to where the street meets San Francisco Bay. On Monday morning, a splash screen appearing on the network read, “Welcome! Enjoy This Free Service. Mayor Edwin M. Lee.”

Last week, YouTube’s ContentID system flagged thousands of videos, many from the site’s gaming community, that it believed were infringing on copyrights. This caused quite a stir, with gamers up in arms about the injustice of the claims against them. Since then, the controversy we’re now dubbing ‘ContentID-Gate‘ has not died down. Instead, matters have only gotten more chaotic, with invalid claims flying left and right and threatening to KO entire networks.

RT @Techmeme: In honor of Winamp, Spotify releases Spotiamp (@lhockenson / Gigaom)

RT @Techmeme: In honor of Winamp, Spotify releases Spotiamp (@lhockenson / Gigaom)

RT @Techmeme: BlackBerry's First Foxconn Partnership Phone Will Be 3G BB10 Device, Coming March Or April…

RT @Techmeme: BlackBerry's First Foxconn Partnership Phone Will Be 3G BB10 Device, Coming March Or April…

By January 2007, they’d all worked sixty-to-eighty-hour weeks for fifteen months—some for more than two years—writing and testing code, negotiating soft­ware licenses, and flying all over the world to find the right parts, suppliers, and manufacturers. They had been working with proto­types for six months and had planned a launch by the end of the year . . . until Jobs took the stage to unveil the iPhone.

RT @Techmeme: Active Twitter accounts follow a median 117 users, 76% follow more people than follow them

RT @Techmeme: Active Twitter accounts follow a median 117 users, 76% follow more people than follow them

RT @Techmeme: 2013: mobiles stagnated, wearables a letdown, arrogance of tech's ruling class increased