The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that four people have been indicted for allegedly breaching the computer systems of several video game companies and the US military, and stealing software worth over $100 million.

It is likely that Comcast will have no problems getting the support of U.S. lawmakers for its proposed $45.2 billion merger with Time Warner Cable. Why, you ask? Well according to several campaign finance watchdog groups (as reported by Ars Technica), the majority of lawmakers reviewing the merger in hearings have taken campaign contributions from the cable operator directly or indirectly.

Did the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spy on Senate staffers in an effort to stymie an investigation into illegal torture tactics being used by the agency during the Bush Administration? CIA Director John Brennan said that the agency does not spy on Congress and that such an allegation is beyond the scope of reason and simply not true.

The United States Department of Justice has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Alamance County, North Carolina Sheriff Terry S. Johnson. According to Federal prosecutors deputies of a North Carolina sheriff accused of illegally targeting Latino drivers shared links to a violent and bloody (unnamed) video game in which players shoot people entering the country illegally, including children and pregnant women.

Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) has come out strongly against a proposed merger between Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, Sen. Franken said that there is already not enough competition in this [we assume he means broadband and cable television] space and this deal goes in the wrong direction. He also said that he is thinks this deal will increase cable prices and decreased the quality of service for Time Warner Cable customers.

A former postal worker pled guilty in federal court in Boston Tuesday to stealing more than 200 video games from mail he handled. The 68-year-old Dorcestor, Mass. man, James L. White, stole the games from the mail between July and November 2012 from packages at the US Postal Service’s General Mail Facility in Boston. He then resold the items to a video game retailer (we assume a local GameStop). White is scheduled to be sentenced for mail theft (a federal crime) on May 8.

An ACLU attorney serving as a legal advisor to former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden says that he would only take a plea deal with the U.S. government if the terms of the deal were solidified prior to his landing on U.S. soil.

"I can tell you now he is not going to return to the country and take his chances on what the details of a plea bargain might be or what might await him at a trial," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Ben Wizner said in an interview on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports."

The United States government defended a heavily-redacted response to surveillance requests at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) made by multiple software technology companies including Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook and LinkedIn. These companies have been petitioning the special court to allow them to disclose government requests. Under the law these companies cannot disclose this information because it has been deemed "classified."

According to a letter sent to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee from Judge Reggie Walton of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), Verizon and other companies have not fought orders to turn over records on all of their customers. Basically Judge Walton is saying that these companies have shown little to no resistance when it comes to government orders seeking information on their customers. Details about the letter were obtained by The Hill.

Last week Microsoft asked the Justice Department for permission to release information to the general public about its participation in government controlled surveillance programs, but the DOJ would not allow it. According to CNet, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith sent a letter on Tuesday to the Obama administration asking for permission to reveal details about how it responds to orders from the U.S. government for private user data.

While America rages over whether former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is a traitor who should be locked up or a hero for revealing the NSA's spying activities (PRISM and phone data collection), a petition on WhiteHouse.gov is gaining some momentum.

The petition calls on the Obama Administration to give Snowden a pardon for his alleged crimes. It should be noted that, while lawmakers, pundits and Washington insiders are calling for Snowden to be charged, the White House and the Justice Department have not made any official move on the matter as of this writing.

A New Zealand Court has ruled that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom is entitled to all the evidence that was seized illegally (according to a NZ court ruling) in early 2012. The FBI and the Department of Justice, who are looking to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand to America to face a litany of charges related to his file-sharing and data storage service, only wanted to share one document. During the raid on his mansion law enforcement seized property and lots and lots of data.

A New York Times article from earlier this week about the FBI's attempt to expand the scope of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and the subsequent response to it from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) should raise alarm bells for anyone that does anything on the Internet.

Will Full Tilt Poker players left in the lurch after the Department of Justice shut the site down finally be getting their money back? It would seem that the answer is yes, but when exactly has not been determined quite yet, according to this Verge report. Back in April 2011 the Department of Justice shut the site down, alleging that Full Tilt Poker and two other gambling sites had circumvented U.S. laws by disguising payments from U.S.

A former executive from GameStop's Texas division has been sentenced to 51 months in prison for embezzling $1.7 million from the company by setting up a shell company, according to an announcement by the U.S. Attorney's Office. Frank Christopher Olivera, the now former Vice President of corporate communications and public affairs at GameStop Texas was convicted this week.

This amusing video takes something Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News about a year ago related to the government's use of drones for domestic surveillance within the borders of the United States by showing him how it could be done in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. The video is the product of the fine folks at Coffee with Games (which incidentally are two of my favorite things).

Ars Technica is reporting that the anonymous source that tried to sell an alleged Microsoft "Durango" development kit via EBay claims that he has been raided by the FBI and local law enforcement. Oops, that's what happens when you try to sell something you probably shouldn't on EBay. But beyond that, he leaked information about the new system ahead of Microsoft's official announcement which is expected to happen later this year.

The United States government has weighed in on the Jammie Thomas-Rasset v. Capitol Records file-sharing case, siding with the RIAA and the recording industry and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Thomas-Rasset the Writ of Certiorari she seeks. The case is the longest running file-sharing case to date, and the first to be heard by the Supreme Court (previously the Court refused to hear two cases related to file-sharing damages).

Two U.S. lawmakers have asked federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice to answer a series of questions about the prosecution of Reddit co-founder and internet activist Aaron Swartz. In a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) want to DOJ to explain why federal prosecutors sought up to 50 years in prison and $1 million in fines for Swartz, who committed suicide prior to his trial. Swartz was arrested in 2011 for downloading 4.8 million documents from the academic archive JSTOR.

House lawmakers are criticizing federal prosecutors involved with the Aaron Swartz case, who killed himself in New York City after the U.S. Government refused to give the internet activist a plea deal. Earlier in the week the Justice Department officially dropped the case. Lawmakers blasted prosecutors for pushing aggressive hacking charges against Swartz, and vowed to look into the details of the case.

Megaupload co-founder Kim Dotcom has launched a teaser site for "Mega" at Me.ga. Dotcom says that the placeholder site is already getting millions of hits despite offering very little to visitors beyond information on how it will work when it launches. Kim Dotcom claims that Mega will use encryption methods that make it so that only those users who are uploading something know what it is. By hiding what users are uploading, Dotcom hopes to avoid the long arm of U.S. law enforcement.

A new United Nations report calls for internet surveillance in the name of fighting terrorism, reports C|Net. The report points out the lack of international agreements on the retention of data, and concerns about open Wi-Fi networks in places like airports, cafes and libraries that are likely prime spots for terrorists and cyber terrorists chatter.

Two weeks ago New Zealand’s Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security revealed that the government had illegally spied on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom. Specifically he said in his report that the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) carried out illegal surveillance on Dotcom, because the agency is only allowed to carry out that kind of action against foreign targets. When the news became public, New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key apologized to Dotcom.

After the parties involved in the Megaupload case failed on multiple occasions to negotiate some way to relinquish legitimate and legal data to Megaupload users left in the lurch, a Federal judge has agreed to hold a hearing on the matter. The one caveat is that the parties involved must come up with a format and the judge has not set a definitive date. Still it's forward motion in a situation that has been stalled by trade groups like the MPAA and the U.S. government.

The battle over returning legitimate files and data stored on Megaupload's servers has hit a brick wall leaving anyone who made the mistake of storing important data there uncertain about whether they will ever get it back. Megaupload’s 1103 servers are gathering dust at Carpathia Hosting in the United States and Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken tells TorrentFreak that, despite best efforts, efforts are stalled.

At the beginning of this year as law enforcement agencies in New Zealand, the U.S., and Hong Kong worked together to shut down Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom's file-sharing empire, it seized just about every asset the charismatic NZ resident owned - including all of his money. This naturally made it tough for Dotcom to pay his legal fees.

But a judgment today by the High Court in Auckland, New Zealand will give Dotcom some relief.

Twenty-year-old Raynaldo Rivera has been arrested by the FBI for his part in various cyber attacks as part of the Lulz Security hacking group. The FBI alleges that Rivera took part in hacking operations against on Sony Pictures in May and June of 2011. They further claim that he worked with Cody Kretsinger, another LulzSec member who pled guilty to hacking charges in April of this year.

The FBI is cracking down on several sites this week that it says have engaged in facilitating Android app piracy. The Department of Justice has seized and locked down the applanet.net, appbucket.net, and snappzmarket.com domains and placed a warning on the sites in question.

If the U.S. government thought they were going to skate right through the New Zealand Courts to bring Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom to America to face charges, they might have figured out that there are a few cracks in their plans.

On Monday we reported that the MPAA and the RIAA recommended to Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel that the United States government do more to combat online piracy like they did with Megaupload. Today Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom offers his two cents on the MPAA's and RIAA's recommendations and goes so far as to say that these trade groups have "corrupted the government."