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?

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This week, TDD regulars Andrew Sorcini, Dwayne DeFreitas, and Lidija Davis join Venturebeat‘s Sean Ludwig as we talk to top contributors to Social news site Reddit.com as we find out what makes them do what they do to make Reddit so popular.

But first, the week’s top tech news…President Obama proposes a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, Apple acquires Chomp, iPhone user wins $850 in throttling case against AT&T, Apple announces iPad 3 event, Yahoo seeks to force Facebook into licensing patents, Google+ suffers low turnout, Reddit crafts an Internet privacy law.

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After an ocean of angry protest, massive websites taking drastic measures, and even the artists they weren’t meant to protect standing against them, Congress has been forced to put an end to the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piract Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP) acts.

Both the Senate, who was getting ready to hold a procedural vote on PIPA next week, and the House of Representatives have taken notice to the extremely negative response to their plans, and have decided to put it all on hold until something a little bit more agreeable can be put together.

A group of artists have written an open letter to Washington regarding the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP) acts that have led numerous websites to go dark in protest today.

Artists include American Gods, Sandman, and Neverwhere author Neil Gaiman, comedian/actor Aziz Ansari, and Nine Inch Nails frontman and Oscar winning composer Trent Reznor, just to name a few.

The letter was posted on the Stop The Wall website, and you can read it in full below, including a list of those who have signed it.

For 24 hours (beginning at 12:00am EST on the 18th of January, year 2012), Wikipedia will go dark to the English-reading world.

The online encyclopedia made the decision to make such a bold statement in hopes of educating the masses on SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and the immense negative effects and restrictions that it could bring to the internet if it were to be made law.