This week, The Drill Down crew looks back at the year in tech and the web for the year 2013. We’ll discuss our favorite tech events of the past year, and what we can expect in 2014.

Before that, however, we discuss a recent discovery that the NSA sought to spy on gamers, eight top tech companies ban together to reform surveillance laws, and is Apple‘s iBeacon just a marketing gimmick or are there bigger plans in store?

This week, the NSA is up to its dirty tricks again & tech companies beef up their security in response, SOPA may be back in a secret treaty uncovered by WikiLeaks, are Amazon employees working themselves sick? and will cellphone use finally be allowed on planes?

This week, more updates in the Edward Snowden/NSA case, Instagram adds video, the FAA relaxes rules on gadgets during travel, Barnes & Noble quits making the Nook, is Pandora ripping its artists off?…and much more.

This week The Drill Down team takes a look at the battle for your online distributed data, with new features on cloud storage services from Microsoft, Dropbox, and Google. Then, it’s sci-fi billionaires in space!!! as Google’s Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and director James Cameron launch into a new venture to mine asteroids.

But first, the headlines… Nokia‘s down 30% with a $1.7 BN loss, Anonymous launches a social music service, Facebook pays Microsoft $550 M for former AOL patents, Adobe announces Creative Suite 6 (and subscription-based licenses), and Facebook announces its staggering Q1 financials, including details on its Instagram purchase.

This week, The Drill Down team discusses Facebook‘s one billion dollar purchase of mobile phone startup Instagram, and whether or not that portends another tech bubble; plus, Is the age of cheap, subsidized cellphones over? But first let’s look at this week’s tech headlines…

Commodore founder Jack Tramiel dies, Apple patches a trojan affecting 600K Macs, US DOJ sues Apple & e-book publishers for price fixing, the FCC‘s plan to track your lost cellphone, Microsoft pays $1 BN for AOL patents, Nokia launches the Lumia 900, Netflix forms a PAC, and Google Plus gets a makeover.