'The National Security Agency's sophisticated hacking operations go way beyond using software vulnerabilities to gain access to targeted systems. The agency has a catalog of tools available that would make James Bond's Q jealous, providing NSA analysts access to just about every potential source of data about a target.'

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The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has published new guidelines aimed at helping app developers abide by data protection laws.

The ICO has also published advice for smartphone and tablet users on how to keep control of their personal information, after finding that many are concerned about how their data is being used by apps

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What happens when a company that knows everything about everyone, controls robots designed for the miliary?

'Google have apparently been buying up lots of robotics firms lately – eight in the last six months – with a view to some unspecified future robotics projects, under the command of the guy who ran the Android phone bit of the company for a while.

What is particularly interesting, though, is that Boston Dynamics has multi-million-dollar contracts with the US military's advanced research division, Darpa, for the production of human-like and other robots.'

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The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable. Read the full Washington Post article here.

Young people are anonymously bullying and trolling themselves online in what some are calling cyber self-harm. Why?

Internet trolling is on the increase, according to recent reports. When people are bombarded with abuse and threats on social networking sites the common assumption is that a stranger is doing it, but it's not always the case.

Some people do it to themselves.

It's known as self-trolling or self-cyberbullying and some charities and social media experts say it is part of another emerging problem they are calling cyber or digital self-harm. Read the article here.