In a case going back to 2010, a Colorado judge has ruled that a woman named as a defendant in a criminal case can be forced to decrypt the contents of her laptop and files. Answering the question of 'what about her fifth amendment right to non-self-incrimination, the judge ruled the fifth amendment does not apply in this case, even though the contents of the protected files could be used to prosecute and convict her.

Pay Pal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel has given $1.25 million to an initiative to create floating libertarian countries in international waters, according to a profile of the billionaire in Details magazine.

Lashing out against the "racial profiling anti-immigrant police state that is Arizona," LulzSec has released their newest data dump: "hundreds of private intelligence bulletins, training manuals, personal email correspondence, names, phone numbers, addresses and passwords belonging to Arizona law enforcement."

Kickstarter is on track to distribue over $150 million dollars to its users’ projects in 2012, or more than entire fiscal year 2012 budget for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), which was $146 million.

Think Google and Facebook know a lot about you now? The IRS? Wait until they start exchanging tax returns, search engine history, medical, photos, etc.

Beginning Friday, Amazon.com and other large out-of-state retailers will be required to collect sales taxes on purchases that their California customers make online.

Biological research is increasingly debunking the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish.

The biggest worry is likely to be this: That this program sets out to accomplish the same aims as the National ID scheme. Difference is, rather than trying to get the states to do the heavy lifting, Washington is going to try and compel private companies to do it.
So a campaign has already started to convince Americans to trust the government on this. (insert canned laughter here)

Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned. The National Sheriffs' Association will say it "strongly supports" mandatory data retention during Tuesday's U.S. House of Representatives hearing on the topic.

With a Web-wide protest on Wednesday that includes a 24-hour shutdown of the English-language Wikipedia, the legislative battle over two Internet piracy bills has reached an extraordinary moment — a political coming of age for a relatively young and disorganized industry that has largely steered clear of lobbying and other political games in Washington.