Chinese journalist Shi Tao who was jailed for eight years because of incriminating email records has been freed by the Chinese police. He was released a year and a half before completing his 10 year sentence.Tao was arrested in 2004 for sending an email that revealed Chinese government restrictions on the local media for the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He sent the email with his Yahoo account and was then posted on a website based in New York that promotes democracy in China.

The Obama administration has legally been allowed to read the emails and listen in on phone calls of Americans since 2011. A surveillance court granted the NSA permission to search Americans' communications in order to spy on citizens two years ago. The Washington Post broke the news that the high court lifted a 2008 ban on such surveillance activities which was imposed in 2008. The court also extended the length of time the NSA can keep intercepted communications from five to six years.

The Georgia Department of Labor has accidentally compromised the personal information of 4,457 people who filed for unemployment claims in the state, including their email addresses. The organization mistakenly sent out a spreadsheet with the names, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and email addresses of these unemployed folks to about 1,000 people via email. The organization said an employee error caused the leak, and is encouraging recipients not to open the email.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed the the NSA has cracked many online security encryptions. According to new slides released by Snowden, the NSA has control over setting international encryption standards and uses supercomputers to crack encryption codes. The NSA also installs secret backdoors to encryption programs of the Internet companies that they collaborate with.

A new iOS app called Ping has just launched. The tool turns your inbox into a to-do list and solicits replies IM style. The user is given a list of items to reply to and a list of items to take action on based on the messages delivered to the inbox. The app currently works for Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and iCloud accounts. The app processes emails into two feeds -- one for messages addressed directly to the recipient and another for marketing and transactional emails.

Parse, a mobile technology platform, has unveiled a few new products including an email and an analytics tool. The tool called "Background Jobs" allows developers to schedule recurring tasks such as batch emailing inactive users. In addition, the platform also revealed a new analytics toolset.

Evomail, one of the inbox organizing apps that got its start on the iPad now has an Android app. The app was originally designed to help iPad users organize their Gmail accounts, and has since expanded to the iPhone and now Android. The app uses gestures so a user can swipe to delete or archive a message, or they can shake the phone to label, star, reply, forward, or mark an email as read.

The Nashville Predators misspelled its team name in an email sent to season ticket holders on Tuesday. The email was meant to inform season ticket holders about discounted parking options and told them how to pick up their "Citizens of Smashville Passport" at Bridgestone Arena this weekend. But in the sign off the hockey team's email department wrote "Go Perds!" instead of "Go Preds!" They responded by sending a follow up email apologizing for the misspelling and blaming it on their excitement for the new season.

Google has defended itself in a class action lawsuit saying that their practice of electronically scanning the contents of people's Gmail accounts in order to sell ads is perfectly legal. Google lawyers are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that wants to make Google stop this practice. In court records Google writes "all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing" and explains that the process is automated using keywords and is not read by human eyes. The class action lawsuit says that Google's practice is unlawful because it violates California's …

Revelations that the US National Security Association is reading everyone's email is driving developers to come up with new email tools aimed that will deliver true privacy to users. The latest company to enter this arena is called Scramble founded by recent Stanford University computer science graduate Daniel Posch. The company offers an encrypted webmail, but it is still in the works. MailPile, an Icelandic startup has raised $135,000 on IndieGogo to offer encrypted email services and file sharing site Megaupload is also working on such tools. Even Silent Circle, a company forced to shut down its email privacy tools, …