The U.S. government is increasingly turning to Google for assistance with its investigations. Between January and June of this year, the search giant received nearly 8,000 requests from the U.S. government for data about Gmail users, bloggers, people who store documents in the cloud and other Google account holders. That includes requests for the type of information that led to the recent resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is throwing some support to Crystal Cox, a blogger who was ordered to pay a staggering $2.5 million after losing a defamation lawsuit. That group says the judgment should be reversed, arguing that the trial judge wrongly treated Cox differently than if she had been a reporter for a traditional newspaper or magazine.

The Authors Guild shouldn't be able to bring a class-action against Google for its book digitization project, the company argues in new papers filed late Friday with an appeals court. Google contends that class-action status isn't appropriate for several reasons, including that individual authors may feel differently than the Authors Guild about the book project. The

AT&T will allow more customers to use the FaceTime videochat app on its network, the company said today. Specifically, AT&T will now allow anyone on a tiered data plan, who also uses an iOS 6 device with LTE -- including the iPhone 5 and some newer iPads -- to access FaceTime over the data network. The company will roll out that shift over the next 8-10 weeks. People who are on unlimited plans still won't be able to use FaceTime on a data network.

The Federal Trade Commission will be led by a Democrat. The Commerce Department will continue its efforts to forge a consensus on privacy codes of conduct. And Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) will push legislation mandating a do-not-track option for Web users. Those are some of the likely consequences of yesterday's elections, which ended in victory for President Barack Obama, and also continued Democratic control of the Senate. The GOP held the House, but it's worth noting that Republican Mary Bono Mack -- a vocal critic of the Obama administration's proposed privacy bill of rights -- appears to have lost her …

Google released its newest version of Chrome today and, as promised, the browser comes equipped with a do-not-track option that users can activate. Users who want to turn on the feature must go to the advanced settings section and check a box next to the statement, "Send a 'Do Not Track' request with your browsing traffic."

Cord-cutting seems to be taking a toll on Time Warner Cable. The company reported today that it lost 140,000 video subscribers during the third quarter of this year, the company said today. That high number was slightly higher than the 131,000 subscriber loss predicted by ISI analyst Vijay Jayant, Reuters reports.

Facebook must have thought that it had finally put an end to the fallout from its doomed Beacon ad program in September. That's when a three-judge panel of a federal appeals court voted 2-1 to uphold a settlement requiring Facebook to pay $6.5 million to create a new privacy foundation.But that decision might not be the last word on the matter. Facebook user Ginger McCall, who also works for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has filed papers asking for further review by a larger panel of the appellate court.

Entrepreneur Kyle Goodwin has been trying for months to retrieve the videos he stored with Megaupload. And now it looks like he'll have to wait quite a bit longer, at least if the U.S. government has its way.