New submitter davesays writes “CNN anchors Erin Burnett and Carol Costello have interviewed Former FBI Counterterrorisim specialist Tim Clemente. In the interviews he asserts that all digital communications are recorded and stored. Clemente: ‘No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.’ ‘All of that stuff’ — meaning every telephone conversation Americans have with one another on U.S. soil, with or without a search warrant — ‘is being captured as we speak.’ ‘No digital communication is secure,’ by which he means not that any communication is susceptible to government interception as it happens (although that is true), but far beyond that: all digital communications — meaning telephone calls, emails, online chats and the like — are automatically recorded and stored and accessible to the government after the fact. To describe that is to define what a ubiquitous, limitless Surveillance State is.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Accel Partners is making a big talent announcement today, with former Groupon COO and Yahoo exec 
Today, over five million businesses are now using Google Apps to help their employees collaborate and connect via the cloud. In just a few years, the adoption of Google’s productivity suite has skyrocketed and, while small businesses have long been its core customer, adoption up the chain is increasing as well. At the same time, as the Google Apps ecosystem continues to expand and evolve, with new services emerging around Chromebooks, Vault, Drive and Android, it can be tough for businesses to keep up with all the new tools, tweaks and iterations.
Gamification startup 
Singapore beauty e-tailer, Luxola, just raised its Series A round from GREE Ventures. The amount was undisclosed, but has been rumored to be in the region of $ 2 million. The company carries about 60 brands of cosmetics and beauty products on its website, and ships to countries in Southeast Asia like Singapore and Malaysia. Its site was launched in September 2012, and it had previously raised a seed round of about $ 596,820 (S$ 740,000) from Wavemaker Labs and Singapore government fund, the National Research Foundation. Its initial angel round was about $ 423,460 ($ 525,000), according to CEO and founder, Alexis Horowitz-Burdick. Besides its latest funding round, the company has also managed to pull over former PopSugar Director of Affiliates and Social, Christine Ng. Prior to that, she was product manager at Sephora, where she led the beauty store’s social media and interactive product efforts. She joins Luxola as its chief marketing officer. “We’re grateful for Christine. The sort of experience she has doesn’t exist in Southeast Asia yet because the community isn’t that old. She doesn’t just have online experience, but also directly with the beauty industry,” said Horowitz-Burdick. Before founding Luxola, she came to Singapore from Washington, DC about six years ago. She had started a group buying site called The Sweet Spot. “I wasn’t interested in the race to the bottom anymore,” she said, of the decision to sell higher-tier products. The average basket price for Luxola is about US$ 44 (S$ 55), she said. Luxola employs a staff of ten. Those are split into two on the engineering side, three handling creative and design tasks, and two marketing people. The new funding will allow Luxola to continue its expansion into the region and set up warehouses there, to complete fulfilment more easily. Currently, it has a warehouse space in Singapore and ships out of it.
Kaifu Lee, former head of Google China and founder of Bejing-based startup incubator Innovation Works, 
Editor’s note: Aditya Mahesh is an associate product marketing manager at Google where he works on the Get Your Business Online program. 
Identity verification startup 
After a brief hiatus from any official tech role, former Tumblr president 
Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer continues to staff out key positions as she’s builds her new senior management team. The latest hire is former Google colleague, Henrique de Castro, who will take the role of chief operating officer with responsibility for strategic and operational management of Yahoo’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide.
ZEFR has been focused on getting Hollywood studios to let it license their movies, and create clips to put on YouTube. But it’s recently added a new business focused on helping content creators across a number of verticals to monetize content that gets posted on YouTube. Now, it’s going beyond just its home U.S. market and taking on the world, with a key international hire to expand overseas.
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