Gadgetory

the NSA is spying on elves and trolls I'm Bridget Carey and this is your scene at update it seems no area of the internet is safe from government spies even online worlds of dragons and magic the Guardian reports that the National Security Agency and its counterpart in the UK the GCHQ have monitored activity on popular online games like World of Warcraft and second life and it also has tapped into Xbox Live all in the quest to spy on alleged terrorists this plan to monitor online gaming began in 2008 according to records obtained by The Guardian from Edward Snowden and based on these records it seems no terrorist plots were stopped by eavesdropping on games but the NSA was able to tap into gamer profiles and go as far as to listen in on the voices of xbox live users it's unclear if these tactics are still used today this news comes on the heels of other reports on the NSA including that it's tracking the whereabouts of cell phones around the world collecting 5 billion records a day on hundreds of millions of devices and that's according to the Washington Post eight major tech companies are calling on President Obama and Congress to limit these government surveillance efforts including Apple Google and Microsoft kids and teenagers can get a free one hour programming class at their local apple retail store on wednesday december 11th the free tutorials are part of a global event called hour of code it's to encourage people to learn computer programming kids need to make a reservation for the Apple class but anyone can find free online tutorials at the computer science education week website which is CS ed week dot org a new report out says Google TV could get a reboot next year under the name Nexus TV that's according to the tech news site the information we might hear more on this from google during the consumer electronics show in january if you're still on the hunt for a cool tech gift for the holidays here's something unique for some smartphone owners it's a case that lights up when someone calls the flashing case is made by a company called vandy and it doesn't take any extra power to light up you see many phones have a setting to flash the LED camera light when there's an alert or when someone calls this case can cover the light to redistribute it across the clear shell so it appears that it lights up on the back and on the sides and you can slide that cover open again when you need to use the flash these are 20 bucks each and are sold for the iphone 5 5s and 5c there's also a version for the galaxy s4 that's your tech news update but you can find more details at cnet com / update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey