The 17-page document, leaked to the paper by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, gives an unprecedented breakdown of the massive amount of tax-payer dollars—which reached $52 billion in fiscal 2013—that the government pours into surveillance and other intelligence-gathering programs.

The document goes on to reveal that something called the Consolidated Cryptologic Program has received more than $10 billion annually for the past four years, and it employs about 35,000 people. It also shows that 23 percent of this year's program funding supported collection and operations, 15 percent went to processing and exploitation, and 14 percent funded analysis and production.

Venture Beat on Sunday posted photos of what it says is a prototype of Samsung's Galaxy Gear smartwatch that was sent to developers. The photos are actually stills from an "internal promotional marketing video" that was created by an independent team working with Samsung, according to Venture Beat.

Venture Beat also reported that the smartwatch has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities and will use Samsung S Voice for voice commands.

Police have found that the GCSB broke the law by eavesdropping on Kim Dotcom, but they are not going to prosecute the spy agency for doing it.

"While GCSB staff did commit the act prohibited by section 216B of the Crimes Act 1961, they did not have the necessary intent to satisfy the elements of the offence and be considered criminally liable," he said.

Government entities are irony-proof, especially those most humorless of government entities -- the censors. Case in point: the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court has decided that the Finnish police did nothing wrong when it added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist.

A completely legal site, one that pointed out errors in the NBI's block list, was shut down for the children.

Lawyers in New Jersey are trying to explore whether calling or texting someone who you know is driving makes you legally liable in the event of an accident.

Attorney Marc Saperstein, an expert in distracted driving cases, told WPIX: "One of the great arguments that my colleague made was to analogize that when you text, as the texter, you are electronically in that car.

Hacktivists loyal to Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad have taken over The New York Times’ web address to broadcast a circa-1998-style defacement message: “Hacked by Syrian Electronic Army.

The hacker gang boasted on its Twitter feed today that it also wrested control of one of Twitter’s domains, and Whois records show that the administrative and technical contacts were set to “SEA SEA.” Twitter says image serving was temporarily disrupted as a result.

We've talked plenty about the corrupting influences of the revolving door between industries and the government. Not all lobbyists or lobbying is bad, per se, but it's a symptom of the times we live in and the business of influence.

And, with so much money flowing into lobbying efforts, we're building a system where political entrepreneurship outweighs market entrepreneurship -- and that's exceptionally dangerous for our economy and our future.

The events of last week involving the Guardian and its reporters have renewed debate and inflamed concern about the age-old dilemma of how to strike the balance between individual liberty and collective security.

I believed at the time, and still do, that it was entirely reasonable for the government to seek to get leaked documents back from the Guardian or have them destroyed. Along with the information the newspaper had published, it had information that put national security and lives at risk. It was right for us to want that information destroyed.

The US National Security Agency (NSA) successfully cracked the encryption code protecting the United Nations’ internal videoconferencing system, according to documents seen by Germany’s Der Spiegel.

The publication reported on Sunday that the electronic breaching of the UN, which is headquartered in New York, occurred in the summer of 2012. Within three weeks of initially gaining access to the UN system, the NSA had increased the number of such decrypted communications from 12 to 458.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer is to retire from the technology giant within the next 12 months.

Shares in Microsoft, criticised for its slow response to the booming market for mobile devices, leapt 9% on the news.