EU can suspend new data transfer pact with U.S. if worried about privacy: Official

By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A new data transfer pact between the European Union and Washington will give the EU the right to pull the plug on the deal if it fears the United States is not safeguarding privacy enough, the EU Justice Commissioner said on Thursday. A previous transatlantic data transfer framework, Safe Harbour, was struck down on Oct. 6 by the European Union's top court because of worries about mass U.S.

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Facebook service aimed at professionals to launch in coming months

Facebook at Work, Facebook Inc's professional version of its social network, is expected to launch in the coming months, after spending a year in tests, a company executive said. The new service, geared towards workplace collaboration, is nearly identical to its ubiquitous social network, with a scrolling news “feed”, “likes” and a chat service. “I would say 95 percent of what we developed for Facebook is also adopted for Facebook at Work,” Julien Codorniou, director of global platform partnerships at Facebook, told Reuters.

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Countering extremists online remains elusive in Congress

By Dustin Volz WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fighting violent extremism online will be the focus of private briefings this week for members of the U.S. Congress from law enforcement officials and Silicon Valley executives, as Washington struggles to formulate a coherent strategy. The classified briefings, scheduled weeks ago, come as Washington policymakers grow increasingly alarmed at how the Islamic State militant group uses technology to recruit online and evade surveillance detection

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

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

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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Social media companies step up battle against militant propaganda

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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