A few days before Rex Tillerson's confirmation as secretary of state, Tillerson's Danish counterpart stood before an audience at a Copenhagen conference on the future of diplomacy and announced he would soon be naming a new ambassador. That would hardly be news — except this ambassador will not be heading to the U.S. or any other country. Instead, he or she will be serving as Denmark's chief diplomatic connection to the tech industry at large.

As the Twitter wars rage in Turkey and rumors spread that the social-media site might give the Turkish authorities information on users, the website took time to reassure Turks that it would do no such thing, the Turkish media site Hurriyet reported on Monday.

The use of social media is exploding in Brazil. It's the third largest market for Facebook; fifth largest for Twitter. The controversial women-only app Lulu recently launched here and quickly became the top downloaded app in the country, making Brazil Lulu's biggest market. "I think it is cool because it's a social network for what all women throughout history have always done," says 20-year-old Marcela, as she taps away at the Lulu app on her iPhone.

Surveillance and spying on world leaders and the general public across the globe have crushed people’s trust in the Internet and other high-tech equipment. More importantly, these actions have infringed on human rights. There was skepticism last week when the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee issued a resolution to protect the people’s right to privacy against massive and unlawful surveillance.

Allegations of mass, indiscriminate government surveillance have sparked a global spat about its proper limits. In defending their programs, the United States and Britain have exposed a troubling, two-tiered approach to the right to privacy in the digital age. Neither government seems willing to recognize the privacy interests of people outside its borders. One thing is clear: as our lives become more connected through the Internet, the right to privacy has never been under a greater global threat.