Yesterday we told you about how Microsoft is one of several companies who are encrypting their services and hardening their systems against the prying of nosy agencies like the NSA. Now Microsoft is fighting a Federal court order that they turn over the data for a user’s email account whose email data resides on a server outside of the U.S. (in Ireland, to be specific).

A lawsuit has been filed alleging that if you switch from an iPhone to an Android phone, your friends’ iPhones will not be able to send text messages to your Android phone. (Full text of iMessage lawsuit below.)

The FBI and Department of Justice have jointly announced that over 90 people around the world have been arrested in a gigantic global takedown of those responsible for the Blackshades RAT (Remote Acccess Tool) malware – also known as “creepware”. In addition to arresting the Blackshades creator Alex Yucel (“Yücel” in his native Sweden), Yücel’s employees, including his marketing person, were arrested, as were customers who had purchased Blackshades and then used it against their own victims. Yücel’s partner and Blackshade co-creator Michael Hogue was arrested in a sting known as “Operation Cardshop” in 2012; Hogue’s arrest lead to the arrest of Yücel.

China and the United States have been hacking each other for years. But the U.S. distinguishes between military espionage and “economic espionage”, the official U.S. position being that military espionage (which the U.S. does) is acceptable, while economic espionage (which China does along with military espionage) is not acceptable. Now the U.S. has indicted 5 Chinese military officials – members of the People’s Liberation Army elusive “Unit 61398” – with economic espionage for hacking into Westinghouse, Alcoa, U.S. Steel, SolarWorld, United Steel Workers Union, and Allegheny Technologies. (Full text of first 20 pages of indictment below.)

This week the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that individuals have a “right to be forgotten” by search engines. While it was a Google listing which complainant M of Spain sought to have removed, and on which the EU Court of Justice ruling turned, the holding applies across a broad spectrum of search engines and other aggregators of personal data about individuals.

Snapchat, the subject of a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) action stemming from their claims that “snaps” would disappear forever after mere seconds – which of course wasn’t true – has settled with the FTC.

A British judge has ordered a father to stop using ALL CAPS when writing email to his children, because it is “the equivalent of shouting.”

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has revealed that it has received over 2000 complaints about Yelp since 2008, and that Yelp receives about six subpenas a month, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Wall Street Journal journalist Angus Loten. As Yelp stock tumbled by as much as 12%, the law firm of Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman is looking into the possibility of a Yelp shareholder lawsuit.

As tax time looms, the IRS has set forth rules about whether they will treat (and so you should treat) Bitcoins and other virtual currency as, well, currency, or property, for tax purposes. The short answer is that the IRS will treat virtual currency such as Bitcoin as property for tax purposes. Here is a more full explanation.

Two years ago, almost to the day, the government filed an antitrust price-fixing lawsuit against Apple, Hatchette, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin, for price-fixing higher rates on ebooks in an effort to put the squeeze on Amazon and their Kindle.

Employees of more than a dozen high tech giants were subject to a secret agreement (see the smoking gun documents) between the companies to not poach each other’s employees. The deal, labelled “Techtopus” by journalist Mark Ames, included Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe, Dell, IBM, eBay, Microsoft, Comcast, Clearchannel, Dreamworks and Pixar, and British public relations company WPP (which stands for Wire and Plastics Products – they started out as a manufacturer of shopping baskets).

Charlie Shrem, founder of Bitcoin exchange BitInstant.com, and BitCoin broker Robert Faiella (a/k/a BTCKing), have been arrested and charged with money laundering in connection with the use of Bitcoins to purchase drugs and other illegal items on the now defunct (shut down) Silk Road.

In his speech regarding changes to the NSA’s Section 215 phone metadata collection and surveillance program, President Barack Obama stated outright, “I am ordering a transition that will end the section 215 bulk metadata program as it currently exists.” During his speech (full transcript below), President Obama also announced that the federal government will need to go to the the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) every time that they want to search data, rather than relying on previous orders.

A Federal court this week rejected network neutrality by striking down a series of government rules and regulations designed to make sure that Internet service providers could not give some Internet services bandwidth priority, while degrading that of other services. The rules had been upheld by an FCC ruling, which the court overturned.

The President’s Review Group, convened to address NSA surveillance and related issues revealed by Edward Snowden, has issued its report and recommendations on how to rein in and address the widespread, overbroad nature of NSA surveillance in general, and its trampling of privacy in particular, while at the same time addressing the genuine need for national security.