► Reuters reports on a congressional hearing at which a U.S. State Department official acknowledged that "More than half the U.S. diplomatic posts overseas may not fully meet security standards [1]." The article notes that the under secretary of state for management at the State Department told a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that of the 283 U.S. diplomatic sites around the world, "There remain approximately 158 posts that have facilities that may not fully meet current security standards," In many cases, that's because they were built before the standards or because they were granted waivers. The comments were made at a closed hearing but the written testimony was posted on the Web site, noted Reuters.

► In a case that may help companies understand how courts will apply data privacy rules [2] to them in Europe, Facebook won the right to require users in Germany to use real names, reports Techcrunch. The crux was that the German court ruled it significant that Facebook's European headquarters is in Ireland, which has less stringent data privacy rules than Germany.

► A bogus zombie attack alert issued by some TV stations that were hacked reveals a worrisome vulnerability in the Emergency Alert System [3], say security experts, according to an NBC report of a Reuters story.