Japan's top accounting SaaS startup, freee, has netted US$8 million in series B funding from DCM and Infinity Venture Partners (IVP). More »

Brazil's Congress on Tuesday passed comprehensive legislation on Internet privacy in what some have likened to a web-user's bill of rights, after stunning revelations its own president was targeted by US cyber-snooping. The lower House of Deputies had passed the bill earlier, and late Tuesday the Senate gave it a green light. That leaves only the expected signature into law from President Dilma Rousseff. "The bill sets out principles, guarantees, rights, and duties for Internet users, and Internet service providers" in Brazil, a statement on the Senate's website said. More »

Tech in Asia sat down with Chris Lin, CEO and co-founder of KKBox to talk about its founding story. More »

New York police Tuesday were eating extra helpings of humble pie after asking people to post images of themselves and NYPD officers on Twitter -- only to face a deluge of pictures of alleged police brutality. "Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? It may be featured on our Facebook," the department posted on its NYPD News Twitter feed, hoping to fuel a feel-good, low-cost public relations campaign. More »

A powerful coalition of the broadcast and cable TV industries asked the panel to rule against the startup Aereo, which allows customers to rent a tiny Internet-linked antenna to watch or record over-the-air broadcasts, raising difficult copyright questions. A similarly strong alliance that includes several technology firms and consumer groups is pressing for a different outcome, saying a ruling for Aereo would send a signal in favor of technological innovation. Justices appeared ambivalent at times, questioning whether Aereo was violating copyright law and mulling a possible impact on the burgeoning cloud computing sector, which stores all kinds of materials online. - Justice Stephen Breyer queried what might happen if Aereo were found to be in violation. More »

Organisations must dramatically improve their response to cyber risks to avoid a new global shock on the scale of the financial crisis that rocked the world in 2008, a study showed Tuesday. Zurich Insurance said in a statement that even cyber security professionals did not have a clear overview of all the interconnected risks organisations can face. The Swiss insurance group, which has produced a report on cyber risks in cooperation with the Atlantic Council think tank, warned that "a build-up in these risks could create a failure on a similar scale to the 2008 financial crisis". More »

The maverick founder of Russia's top social network, Pavel Durov, said Tuesday he had fled the country after selling his share in the company under pressure from the security services. Durov told US technology news website TechCrunch he was no longer in Russia and had "no plans to go back" after social network VKontakte (In Touch) announced Monday that he had left the company. On Monday the 29-year-old said the social network had effectively been taken over by Kremlin allies, including Igor Sechin, one of President Vladimir Putin's closest confidants. More »

Police in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen performed a raid this morning on the offices of one of China’s most notorious video piracy apps. More »

Smartphone growth is being fueled not by big names like Samsung but by the increasing demand of homegrown smartphone brands in the country. More »

Carmudi, the car classifieds site headed up by self-proclaimed incubator Rocket Internet, just closed a $10 million funding round led by Tengellman Ventures, Rocket Internet’s investment arm. TechCrunch ... More »

The six selected venture capital funds are: Jungle Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, Walden International, SBI Ven Capital, New Asia Investments, and Monk’s Hill Ventures. More »

Indian property listings site CommonFloor got $10 million in fresh funds at the start of this year. Some of that cash has just been put to good use to acquire the student accommodation marketplace Flat.io.... More »

Rumors that Apple was finally getting serious about virtual payments and about replacing cash and credit cards with smartphone apps started to pick up pace in September when the latest iPhone, the 5S, launched with a built-in fingerprint scanner. The well-connected tech site says that Apple is in the process of interviewing senior payments industry executives as it starts to build a full electronic payments business. An unnamed source in the article is quoted as saying that Apple's "ambitions are very, very serious." Apple has made no secret of the fact that it wants to go further in offering its customers new and easy-to-use electronic payment options. More »

Telecommunications titan AT&T on Monday unveiled an initiative to expand super-fast Internet service in the US. The move came in the face of growing competition from Google, which has been steadily adding US cities to its Google Fiber network offering mega-speedy data transmission. AT&T said that it is seeking to work with as many as 100 cities or municipalities across the country to put in place Internet service that can move data as fast as a gigabit per second. AT&T is in the process of putting "GigaPower" service in the Texas cities of Dallas and Austin, and is in advanced talks to do likewise in Raleigh-Durham and Winston-Salem. More »

Samsung is the world’s – and Asia’s – top smartphone maker. But there are a lot of rival phone-makers out there aiming to dethrone the likes of Samsung and Apple. That competition is especially strong ... More »

Building an ecosystem is like creating an industry with tech entrepreneurs and investors as pillars. More »

Surveillance cams are silent sentinels that serve as persistent but dumb watchers of our living spaces. But that is changing. More »

In 2014, consumer spending in ecommerce will hit $525 billion in Asia – half of the global total. As ecommerce continues to be a top investment destination for angels and VCs, expect to see more acceleration ... More »

Japanese recipe site Cookpad has announced the acquisition of a 60 percent stake in Indonesia’s recipe sharing site DapurMasak for US$600,000. More »