It’s been another action-packed week in the world of cybersecurity, with the NSA stoking more controversy over its global intelligence gathering practices. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon found that the spy agency’s telephone data surveillance program is illegal, and likely unconstitutional.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by one Larry Klayman, who charged that the NSA collected metadata on Verizon accounts belonging to him and one of his clients. The judge granted an injunction barring further gathering of information pertaining to phone records, and ordered the deletion of any records already obtained.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote.

The landmark ruling followed the release of a 300-page report outlining 46 recommendations for reforming NSA’s surveillance operations. In one of them, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies suggests that the agency end domestic bulk call data collection.

The government is not alone in mishandling sensitive user information Target customers went up in arms this week over the retail giant’s failure to protect their credit and debit card accounts. About 40 million were stolen this Thanksgiving weekend in the largest such breach since the 2005 TJX data theft incident.

Over in the consumer electronics space, a recent study from researchers at John Hopkins University revealed that it is possible to disable the Apple Mac iSight’s indicator using a Remote Administration Tool, otherwise known as a RAT. The vulnerability only affects older Apple computers, notably the iMac G5 and Intel-powered MacBook models.