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ByJuliePace The Associated Press WASHINGTON President Barack Obama argued Fri- day that a resurgent fear of terrorism across Eu- rope and the United States should not lead countries to overreact and shed privacy protections, even as Brit- ish Prime Minister David Cameron pressed for more government access to en- crypted communications used by U.S. companies. Obama and Cameron met at the White House just over a week after terror at- tacks in France left 17 peo- ple dead and stirred anx- ieties on both sides of the Atlantic. In the wake of the attacks, Cameron has re- doubled efforts to get more access to online informa- tion, while the French gov- ernment plans to present new anti-terrorism mea- sures next week that would allow for more phone-tap- ping and other surveillance. "As technology develops, as the world moves on, we should try to avoid the safe havens that could otherwise be created for terrorists to talk to each other," Cam- eron said in a joint news conference with Obama. The response to the Paris attacks could reinvigorate the debate over balancing privacy and security, even as governments and compa- nies still grapple with the backlash against surveil- lance that followed the 2013 disclosures from former Na- tional Security Agency con- tractor Edward Snowden. With some in France calling the attacks their country's Sept. 11, there are also fears that the government could respond with laws akin to the sweeping USA Patriot Act that the American Con- gress quickly approved af- ter the 2001 attacks. Obama avoided taking a public position on Cam- eron's call for U.S.-based technology companies like Google, Facebook and Ap- ple to give governments more access to encrypted communications. He urged caution, saying he did not believe the threat level was so great that the "pendu- lum needs to swing" toward more invasive security mea- sures. Still, Obama agreed with his British counterpart that governments need to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. He said that if having a phone number or email address of a potential terrorist isn't enough to dis- rupt a plot, "that's a prob- lem." Last fall, FBI Director James Comey complained that new, locked-down op- erating systems for smart- phones made by Apple and Google could hinder law en- forcement's ability to inves- tigate and prosecute crime, pointing to cases in which police would have had their hands tied had the phones been encrypted. Leading American Inter- net companies expanded their encryption programs in an effort to protect cus- tomers' communications in the wake of Snowden's rev- elations. The disclosures, con- tained in top-secret govern- ment documents leaked to news organizations, showed the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, were collecting digital commu- nications records from millions of citizens not sus- pected of a crime. The prospect of autho- rized eavesdropping on encrypted communica- tions raised alarms from civil liberties groups, as well as practical concerns that weakening encryption could also put users at risk of hacking. "There's no way to de- sign a service so that it's se- cure from North Korea and China while also allowing the British and U.S. govern- ments to gain access," said Christopher Soghoian, prin- cipal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's either secure or it's insecure." The head of the Internet Association, a group that counts Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay and Netflix among its members, said any government access to consumers' data must be "rule-bound, transparent and tailored." "Just as governments have a duty to protect the public from threats, Inter- net services have a duty to our users to ensure the se- curity and privacy of their data," association President Michael Beckerman said in a statement. U.S. and European in- telligence agencies are still piecing together the moti- vations and associations of those responsible for the attacks in Paris on the sa- tirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a kosher gro- cery. Three gunmen who carried out the attacks and were killed by police claimed links to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. US-BRITAIN Fr an ce a tt ac ks r ei nv ig or at e privacy versus security debate EVANVUCCI—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS President Barack Obama listens as British Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during their joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Friday. J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE Gay rights advocate Vin Testa waves a rainbow flag in front of the Supreme Court in Washington. By Mark Sherman The Associated Press WASHINGTON Setting the stage for a potentially his- toric ruling, the Supreme Court announced Friday it will decide whether same- sex couples have a right to marry everywhere in America under the Con- stitution. The justices will take up gay-rights cases that ask them to declare for the en- tire nation that people can marry the partners of their choice, regardless of gender. The cases will be argued in April, and a decision is ex- pected by late June. Proponents of same-sex marriage said they expect the court to settle the mat- ter once and for all with a decision that invalidates state provisions that de- fine marriage as between a man and a woman. On the other side, advocates for traditional marriage want the court to let the political process play out, rather than have judges or- der states to allow same- sex couples to marry. Same-sex couples can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. That number is nearly double what it was just three months ago, when the justices initially de- clined to hear gay mar- riage appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans on same-sex marriage. The effect of the court's action in Octo- ber was to make final sev- eral pro-gay rights rulings in the lower courts. Now there are just 14 states in which same-sex couples cannot wed. The court's decision to get in- volved is another marker of the rapid change that has redefined societal norms in the space of a generation. The court will be weigh- ing in on major gay rights issues for the fourth time in 27 years. In the first of those, in 1986, the court upheld Georgia's anti-sod- omy law in a devastating defeat for gay rights advo- cates. But the three subse- quent rulings, all written by Justice Anthony Ken- nedy, were major victo- ries for gay men and lesbi- ans. In its most recent case in 2013, the court struck down part of a federal anti-gay marriage law in a decision that has paved the way for a wave of lower court rulings across the country in favor of same- sex marriage rights. Court sets stage for historic ruling GAY MARRIAGE By Seth Borenstein The Associated Press WASHINGTON For the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday. Both the National Oce- anic and Atmospheric Ad- ministration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keep- ing. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an in- dependent group out of Uni- versity of California Berke- ley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record. NOAA said 2014 aver- aged 58.24 degrees Fahren- heit (14.58 degrees Celsius), 1.24 degrees (0.69 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-cen- tury average. But NASA, which calcu- lates temperatures slightly differently, put 2014's aver- age temperature at 58.42 degrees Fahrenheit (14.68 degrees Celsius) which is 1.22 degrees (0.68 degrees Celsius) above the average of the years 1951-1980. Earth broke NOAA re- cords set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA record for cold was in 1911. NOAA also said last month was the hottest December on record. Six months in 2014 set marks for heat. The last time Earth set a monthly cold re- cord was in December 1916. "The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers Univer- sity, who wasn't part of ei- ther research team. "Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind." Texas A&M Univer- sity climate scientist An- drew Dessler and other ex- perts said the latest statis- tics should end claims by non-scientists that warm- ing has stopped. It didn't, as climate denial sites still touted claims that the world has not warmed in 18 years. 2014's heat was driven by record warmth in the world's oceans that didn't just break old marks: It shattered them. Record warmth spread across far eastern Russia, the western part of the United States, in- terior South America, much of Europe, northern Africa and parts of Australia. One of the few cooler spots was in the central and eastern United States. "Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures" in 2014, said Tom Karl, director of NO- AA's National Climatic Data Center. Nine of the 10 hottest years in NOAA global re- cords have occurred since 2000. The odds of this hap- pening at random are about 650 million to 1, according to University of South Caro- lina statistician John Grego. Two other statisticians con- firmed his calculations. Climate scientists say one of the most significant parts of 2014's record is that it happened during a year where there was no El Nino weather oscillation. During an El Nino, when a specific area of the central Pacific warms unusually and influ- ences weather worldwide, global temperatures tend to spike. Previous records, es- pecially in 1998, happened during El Nino years. Every year in the 21st century has been in the top 20 warmest years on re- cord, according to NOAA. Temperatures have risen by about 1.6 degrees Fahr- enheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the mid-19th century and pre-industrial times, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where the space agency tracks warm- ing temperatures. CLIMATE Heat is on; NOAA, NASA say 2014 warmest year on record THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A roofer works under the mid-day sun in Gilbert, Ariz. 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