Voices

Obama Unaware as U.S. Spied on World Leaders: Officials

The National Security Agency ended a program used to spy on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a number of other world leaders after an internal Obama administration review started this summer revealed to the White House the existence of the operations, U.S. officials said.

SNL’s Winners and Losers From the Government Shutdown (Video)

Nothing like a good old-fashioned government shutdown to create an opportunity for some equal-opportunity political skewering.

Is Ford’s Alan Mulally Now in the Lead to Be New CEO of Microsoft?

Can the car maker fix what ails the tech giant?

Voices

The FCC Veers Off Course on Mobile Auctions

There is no evidence that crippling spectrum auctions would accomplish the Obama administration’s policy objectives for universal broadband.
mobile antennae

ATD Week in Review: Facebook Gets More Twittery and Kara’s Open Letter to Jeff Bezos

The week in AllThingsD, in one convenient post. You’re welcome!

Voices

Samsung Loses $1 Billion in Market Value After U.S. Vetoes Apple Import Ban

More than $1 billion was wiped out of Samsung Electronics Co.’s market value early Monday after a surprise decision by the Obama administration over the weekend to veto an import ban on some Apple Inc. products in the U.S.

Obama Administration Vetoes Apple Product Ban

The president strikes down a ruling that could have prohibited sales of some Apple products in the U.S.

Political Sniping Explodes on Amazon After Obama’s Kindle Singles Interview

Reviewers at their worst.

News Byte

AG Eric Holder Vaguely Promises “Holistic” Declassification of Surveillance Docs

The Obama administration wants to declassify information about surveillance programs such as the secret FISA requests made famous by Edward Snowden’s PRISM leaks “sooner rather than later,” according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. In an interview with Bloomberg, Holder said the issue was finding a way to give information to the public that’s “not piecemeal, but really is holistic.” Google and Facebook are both actively seeking this information from the feds, and bickering about how best to approach it.

News Byte

Twitter Legal Director Nicole Wong Officially Joins White House as Deputy CTO

Nicole Wong, former director of legal products at Twitter, will depart the company to join the Obama administration as deputy U.S. chief technology officer, the White House said in a statement on Thursday. As AllThingsD reported previously, Wong will be working on privacy and technology issues under Todd Park, the acting U.S. chief technology officer. Previous to her time at Twitter, Wong spent years at Google working on issues around user-generated content and censorship on YouTube.