On this week’s show: Google previously bought seven robotics companies, and this week it buys the Big Dog (literally), Sprint guns for T-Mobile, Instagram wants a piece of Snapchat‘s action, Twitter changes blocking–then changes their mind, are the NSA‘s actions unconstitutional?

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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, the man behind the biggest black market on the dark web, the biggest crowdfunding campaign ever, Mark Zuckerberg wants to give the entire world internet access, the iPhone in gold?, the Tesla Model S beats all safety records, our ongoing NSA surveillance coverage, and more…

This week, Greg Davies from the BlendoveR podcast and frequent Geeks of Doom contributor (including the Tardisblend podcast) joins us to discuss how the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on our phone calls, e-mails, texts, and all online activity in the name of national security. Are we overreacting, or not acting enough? Also, the NSA may have our data, but they can never patent our DNA. Microsoft does a 180 on their followup to the 360, and Google creates a network of floating balloons…