Earlier this week we reported that a "bomb threat directed at the offices of Gearbox Software"  led to Plano, Texas police clearing the area on Friday while it searched for an explosive device. It turns out that the bomb threat was not directed specifically at Gearbox, according to this Polygon report.

In an interview with Polygon, Visceral Games' Ian Milham, the creative director of the upcoming cops v. robbers first-person shooter Battlefield Hardlines, tackles the thorny subject of the militarization of police departments in America. The subject came to the forefront of conversation after the police force in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri rolled out armored vehicles and military gear in response to large scale protests over the shooting of Michael Brown.

Marin County, California District Attorney Ed Berberian's office is co-sponsoring a toy and videogame trade-in program alongside the Center for Domestic Peace and Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream in the month of October. The DA's office is co-sponsoring the event because it found great success with a similar buyback program for real guns two years ago. That firearm buy-back program saw people line up to sell an estimated 857 weapons for a total of more than $100,000. The funds for that program came from donations and $40,000 provided by county supervisors.

Wesley "wolvereness" Wolfe is the latest to become victimized by a swatting prank. According to Chron, the 25-year-old programmer best known for Craftbukkit for Minecraft, was the victim of someone sending a swat team to his house, claiming that he had shot and killed his parents and was going to kill more people.

The FBI is working with the IGDA and "bullying experts" to help game developers cope with and fight against online bullying, harassment and threats. According to Polygon, the IGDA began talking to the federal law enforcement agency during Comic-Con in San Diego back in July.

The City of London's Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has begun replacing advertising on sites deemed to be "copyright infringing websites" with official warnings from the government informing visitors that the site is under criminal investigation, according to this Wired UK report. The sites receiving these warnings that replace their ads have been designated by the government as "hosting copyright-infringing content" and reported to the agency by rights holders.

In January of this year Apple was the first company to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over Apple’s handling of in-app purchases. The company agreed to make it harder for children to purchase in-game content and apps without the express consent of parents or guardians, and Apple agreed to pay out $32.5 million to parents affected by its lax policy - and if the payouts were less than that amount the balance of the settlement would go to the FTC.

Sparks Nevada police have released a 1,300 page report detailing an exhaustive investigation into the October 2013 middle school shooting in Sparks, Nevada.

"The family owns an XBOX 360 and 69 video games," Sparks, Nevada police chief Brian Allen said at the media event announcing the release of the department's 1300-page report on last year's shooting involving 12-year-old Jose Reyes, who injured two, killed teacher Michael Landsberry, and killed himself using a 9mm handgun at the Sparks Middle School.

Washington D.C-based news station WIJA offers a report that tries to solicit anger from local policemen about the depiction of violence in Starbreeze Studios.

The Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation (the country's equivalent of the FBI) is investigating allegations that California State Senator was brokering a deal to buy firearms in the country and smuggle them into the United States.

FBI agents searched another legislative office belonging to suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) on Tuesday after lawmakers alerted authorities that Yee had additional office space.

Verizon says that it wants to disclose all of the various requests it received from law enforcement and intelligence agencies this year, but it has to negotiate with the U.S. government. The company's announcement follows a request by shareholders last month to disclose its dealings with the NSA.

A report on the investigation of last year’s horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has been released to the public.  The purpose of the report is to identify persons other than the shooter who are criminally responsible for the twenty-seven homicides that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012 and indicate if there will be any state prosecutions.

Almost a year after Adam Lanza stormed the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life, a report on the investigation will be released to the public, according to prosecutors overseeing the case. The report will be published on the website of Connecticut's Division of Criminal Justice, www.ct.gov/csao.

Three men from Staten Island were so excited to get their copy of Grand Theft Auto V that they used an unconventional means to get to the front of a long line: they posed as police officers.

While the media immediately jumped to the conclusion that an 8-year-old boy who shot his elderly grandmother was somehow motivated by playing Grand Theft Auto, it looks like they were completely and utterly wrong. What police initially called a "homicide" has been ruled an accidental shooting, according to the Huffington Post.

Robert Bowling's LA-based game development studio Robotoki had a scare this week when heavily armed police officers from the LAPD raided the offices in response to a panic alarm going off. Polygon chronicles the saga pretty well - complete with some still photos from an ADT security camera - but the short of it is that things could have gotten ugly because of a cardboard cutout from a game.

Update: Keen-eyed readers may have noticed that two items among all the crap that was hauled out of the Lanza residence were an "NRA certificate for Nancy Lanza" and a copy of the "NRA Guide to the Basics of Pistol Shooting."  This has lead many to assume that the Lanza's were NRA members.  As such, the National Rifle Association was quick to release the following statement:

Lieutenant J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police issued a brief statement yesterday in response to a New York Daily News report detailing particulars of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting that occurred last December. An anonymous source attending a law enforcement seminar in New York leaked supposed information from the investigation about the shooter, Adam Lanza, claiming that he had a spread sheet filled will data from other mass shootings.

A sensational New York Daily News report (dug up by Kotaku) details what a "law enforcement source" (who spoke at length with the paper) calls Adam Lanza's "score sheet," a spreadsheet filled with information from past mass killings.

If you own a smart phone, an Android or iOS-based device or even a hand-held gaming system or a laptop, you no longer have to worry about having the device searched by a border patrol officer when entering the United States without some sort of reasonable cause. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled that allowing border agents to search such devices violates Fourth Amendment protections.

During a panel discussion on CBS' popular Sunday political show Face the Nation, former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole said that politicians rushing to blame video games for the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut are misguided because the evidence does not support their theory.

"It’s my experience that video games do not cause violence," O’Toole told CBS News."However, it is one of the risk variables when we do a threat assessment for the risk to act out violently."

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.

Reuters is reporting that the National Rifle Association, victims of gun violence, gun safety groups, gun owners, and unnamed representatives from the film and video game industries will meet with Vice-President Joe Biden's task force set up to come up with solutions and answers in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults.

The 86-officer strong police department in Canton, Ohio is purchasing video game-like simulation technology called the MILO Range Pro 4 system. Developed and sold by IES Interactive Training, the MILO Range Pro 4 system offers more than 500 crime-scene scenarios to improve police skills in the field - from talking a suspect down in a threatening situation to last resort tactics like shooting suspects. The police department expects to have its officers using the system by sometime early next year.

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.

A Federal Judge has sentenced 36-year old Sang Jin Kim to 40 months in prison and ordered him to forfeit more than $400,000 in assets. Prosecutors charged Kim with criminal copyright infringement in November of 2011 and seized the domains 82movie.com and 007disk.com. Prosecutors claimed that Kim ran an online piracy empire through his Washington-based company World Multimedia Group Inc. The sites offered pirated versions of popular movies, Korean TV shows, software and video games, according to prosecutors.

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.

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."