NEWS WRAP: Edward Snowden urges tech industry to make data privacy a priority

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden says he plans to work on technology to preserve personal data privacy and is calling on programmers to join his efforts.

Snowden spoke via a Google Hangout at the Hackers on Planet Earth Conference, stressing the need for the tech industry to embed more security and privacy-protecting technology into everyday tech products.

He hinted “that’s what a lot of my future work is going to be involved in, and I hope you’ll join me… in making that a reality”.

Pirates beat blockades

Despite a push by the entertainment industry to get torrent search engine The Pirate Bay blocked in several countries, the website has doubled its visitors since 2011, TorrentFreak reports.

Roughly 9% of all visitors use proxies, The Pirate Bay says, and the United States is the most popular traffic source, with around 9% of all users.

Buzzfeed’s second biggest social referral source now Pinterest, not Twitter

Buzzfeed is one of the fastest growing media companies ever, with a monthly audience of 150 million. This is thanks, in large part, to an unparalleled understanding of what people will read and share on Facebook.

But much of its most recent traffic growth has come from Pinterest which, two years after it started producing content explicitly intended for the site, has become its second biggest source of social referrals.

Overnight

The Dow Jones industrial Average is up 123.37 to 17,100.18. The Australian dollar is currently trading at US94 cents.