Riot Games revealed that account information for a "portion of" North American League of Legends players was recently compromised. According to Riot, usernames, email addresses, encrypted passwords, and some names were compromised, along with approximately "120,000 transaction records from 2011 that contained hashed and salted credit card numbers have been accessed."

Update: Politico is reporting that the White House knew that David Miranda would be stopped at London's Heathrow Airport before it happened, but it also denied any involvement in the incident.

"This is a decision that they made on their own and not at the request of the United States," White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said.

According to an Ars Technica report, Germany’s justice minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said on Monday that she favored even stronger European Union rules that would enhance data protection and that companies in the United States who don't abide by those standards should be barred from doing business in the European Market.

A scary message greeted anyone who visited various Crytek-related web sites on late Friday:

While revelations about the NSA's domestic spying programs are alarming and scary for anyone that cares about privacy, it could be worse. The New York Times explains why the NSA's collected data could be shared across just about every other agency in the U.S. government - if it let it happen.

When it comes to the NSA's overbroad surveillance activities, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) would be perfectly within his rights to say "I told you so." Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been talking - vaguely, because all the information was classified back then - about how the Patriot Act was being used in an overbroad way to keep tabs on American citizens. It used to be that spying on American citizens was outside the NSA's purview and jurisdiction, but the Patriot Act and other laws opened the flood gates.

Last night in the United States House of Representatives the Amash Amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 217 - 205. Approximately 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted for the measure that would have put a stop to large scale domestic spying on Americans, while 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it. Six Republicans and 6 Democrats abstained from voting or were not present. The Amendment was a rider to the massive defense bill.

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash is proving to be a worthy adversary against the Republican establishment and the White House when it comes to national security issues, and he seems to have no problem throwing his enthusiastic support behind causes to stop the NSA's clandestine spying programs, much to the chagrin of hawks on both sides of the aisle.

Libertarian-themed political website Reason.com is reporting that the Amash Amendment has survived the House's Rules Committee process. The Rules Committee voted late last night to allow several anti-NSA amendments to the $598.3 billion defense bill to be voted on this week.

In Episode 61 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the First Amendment, if Microsoft will cooperate with the government to allow access to the Kinect's various features (for the purposes of spying on us), Forza 5 requiring a 'day one' update, and a whole lot more. there's even some talk about Howard the Duck, LEGOs, the new Avengers movie, Hank Pym, Comic-Con and more. Download Episode 61 now: SuperPAC Episode 61 (1 hour, 10 minutes) 64 MB.

Stefan Svallfors, a professor of sociology at Umea University has submitted former NSA contractor Edward Snowden as his pick for the Nobel Peace Prize. Recently he sent a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee nominating Snowden because of his leaks on several secret NSA surveillance programs being run in the U.S. and in Europe.

According to a report on NextGov, the person replacing outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will likely be someone who has supported National Security Agency digital surveillance programs or legislation such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Secretary Napolitano announced earlier this month that she would be leaving the DHS in September to lead the University of California.

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.

The Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee released a draft bill today that attempts to tackle the thorny issue of cybersecurity. The draft bill is backed by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and ranking Republican member John Thune (R-S.D.). Its creators claim that the draft is an attempt to create a compromise on the issue of cybersecurity after repeated (and failed) attempts to pass legislation through the Senate last term.

A new report from The Guardian reveals the scope of Microsoft's alleged collaboration with the National Security Agency and its PRISM domestic spying program. According to the report, which cites top secret documents obtained by the Guardian, Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption related to its Outlook portal and web chat services; provided help with Hotmail mail services, its cloud storage service SkyDrive; and Skype.

Nintendo announced that Club Nintendo, its member rewards site in Japan, has been hacked. The security breach was discovered when Nintendo noticed a large number of access errors on July 2. This prompted Nintendo to conduct a deeper investigation. Looking further into the issue, Nintendo found 23,000 instances of unauthorized log-ins (with 15 million attempts) between June 9 and July 4 on Japan's Club Nintendo site. The security breach does not apply to Club Nintendo sites in other countries, according to Nintendo.

Germany’s internal security chief Hans-Peter Friedrich, has suggested to German citizens that it might be wise to avoid American services in the wake of the NSA PRISM scandal and other activities that involved targets in Europe. According to an Associated Press report, Friedrich said on Wednesday that "whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers."

Several advocacy groups have banded together for a 100 city protest called Restore the Fourth on July 4. The day-long protest is described by organizers as a "grassroots campaign designed to raise discussion in Congress about the rules and regulations of the Fourth Amendment." Specifically, the protest focuses on some of the laws and activities being used in the name of fighting terrorism.

Ubisoft has sent out emails and set up a support thread related to a recent security breach related to Ubisoft accounts. The company says that an exploit was used to gain unauthorized access to some of its online systems resulting user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords being exposed. The company claims that it was quick to take action and that credit and debit card information was not compromised because it is not stored on the same servers as personal information.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that the grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA) at StopWatching.Us has garnered 500,000 signatures. When half a million people sign up for a campaign the government would be wise to take note of it.

A new web game called "Snowden's Leaks: The Game" (starring Edward Snowden and President Obama) lets players take the man who leaked information about the NSA's spying activities (PRISM and mobile phone data collection) for a spin as he fills up USB drives with secret data while avoiding NSA agents and security cameras using distractions like doughnuts and hiding places like behind the American flag.

While the rest of the country worries about what the NSA is doing with our data on the Internet, the state of Texas is securing the privacy of its citizens' emails. On Friday Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) signed into law a privacy bill that will guard Texans from warrantless searches by state law enforcement officials. House Bill 2268 in effect requires that state investigators obtain a warrant to access emails no matter how old the communication might be.

Ubisoft's Watch Dogs couldn't be more topical and timely than at this very moment. With the revelation that the NSA is allegedly collecting data from our Internet activity on sites like Google and Facebook and tracking the data of Americans' mobile phones, Watch Dogs is like this generation's cautionary tale on government tyranny (think 1984 or Fahrenheit 451).

Libertarian publication Reason has a new song from resident parody prodigy Remy about the NSA's mobile phone surveillance program called "Tap It: The NSA Slow Jam." The song makes fun of the NSA's PRISM program and its practice of collecting Americans' mobile phone meta-data that was leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The best line in the song, in my opinion:

"Text yourself about it, let us know how you feel."

You can find the lyrics here.

While America debates whether former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is a traitor or a hero for leaking classified information related to the NSA's alleged "PRISM" internet surveillance program or analyzing the data from Americans' mobile phones, some people are busy trying to make us laugh about the whole situation. One of those people is comedian Steve Hofstetter, who has created parody video of the "deleted scenes" from The Guardian interview with Snowden.

The English language version of Data Dealer, a Facebook and web game about data privacy, has been released. Developed to teach about the perils and pitfalls of data mining, the 2013 Games for Change Awards nominated game puts players in the shoes of a data mining company that uses various internet services to collect and resell both legally and illegally obtained information. Players do this through social networks, sweepstakes, mobile apps, the web, dating sites and more.

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.

Motherboard (part of VICE - which you may know better from their new weekly news show on HBO) has an interesting interview with two hackers - Dragon and PhäntömZ - who run a stresser/booter company called Agony (a stresser/booter is a software or service that allows a user to flood a network). In the Interview the publication talks to the duo about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, botnets, shells, black hat and white hat hackers, Anonymous, CISPA, and more.

The BBC reports that four members of the hacktivist group LulzSec based in the United Kingdom have been sentenced this week. They are Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Ackroyd. All four pled guilty to various charges either last year or earlier this year.

Liberal-flavored site Burnt Orange Report sheds some light on a Texas bill sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans in the House that gives law enforcement in the state broad powers to look at private Internet data without much justification.

The bill was sponsored by Texas Republican Reps. John Frullo, Allen Fletcher, and John Carona; and Democratic Rep. Senfronia Thompson. House Bill 2268 is described as follows: