Governments demand companies allow access to data, or else

A decades-old alliance of national intelligence partners promised to get at encrypted data last week, whether tech companies helped them or not.

NSA leaker Reality Winner gets 63 months in jail

Reality Leigh Winner, the NSA contractor who leaked sensitive information to the Intercept last year, was sentenced to 63 months in prison last week along with three years of supervised release.

Hackers break into newswire services, trade on what they find

Some financially-motivated hackers go straight for the money, but others take a more circuitous route, going after information that they can use for profit. That’s what criminals convicted this week did until they were caught in 2015, earning millions in ill-gotten gains.

Fake Bitcoin exchange traps drug dealers on the dark web

As around 35 alleged drug vendors have found out to their cost, you never know who you’ll meet on the dark web. In the case of the customers of one money laundering operation, it turned out to be agents working for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).