Can the IRS look through your email without a warrant — and does that run contrary to the Fourth Amendment? Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seem to suggest as much, but the IRS has said it doesn’t use email to target taxpayers. While millions of Americans pop their returns into the mail today, we look at issues of data, privacy and the law. 

Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival kicks off the season of big summer music festivals across the U.S. and beyond. So what’s on the festival’s homepage? A link to the Coachella app, of course. But with friend locator apps and visual sharing apps like Instagram and Vine, the list of tech that will be front and center at concerts this summer is growing. But at Coachella, the list goes beyond applications — there is cooling technology that goes into the festival too. 

Baseball, with its passion for tradition, is higher tech than you think. Major League Baseball is now working with wireless engineering company Qualcomm to make sure that fans can use their smartphones while at the ballpark. And there’s been much work over the last decade to insure that things go smoothly for people who pay to watch games online. MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman says things were different in the early, herky-jerky days of streaming.

Funding follows high-tech weaponry. The Pentagon won’t say what they are, but the Air Force has now officially designating six technologies as ‘weapons.’ Reuters reports the vice commander of the Air Force Space Command telling a conference, ‘This means that the game-changing capability (of) cyber is…going to get more attention and the recognition that it deserves.’  Recognition and more importantly money, since military budgets tend to favor weapons.

An appeals court in the Golden State has ruled it is illegal in California to use a handheld mobile phone to navigate while driving. The ruling suggested that if State law seemed arbitrary, given that it is legal to manipulate other devices in a car, people should take it up with the legislature to change the law. 

Television stations have powerful transmitters. Instead of the sometimes slow and often expensive Internet, why not use those transmitters to get TV shows into smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. The National Association of Broadcasters big show is going on right now in Las Vegas and one key development is called, simply ‘Mobile TV’ — special smartphones or special add-ons for mobile devices so you can keep watching when you head out the door.  

We’ve been reporting this week that the federal government wants to spend $100 million to unravel the complex  of the human brain. Someone else who’s been thinking a lot about the brain is a guy we’ve wanted to speak with for a long time: The legendary inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. He’s done pioneering work in optical character readers, flatbed scanners, electronic keyboards for musicians and beyond. Kurzweil has thought a lot about the ways technology and human beings are becoming more intertwined. And his latest book is called ‘How to Create A Mind.’ He tells us about an irony: While the brain’s work is complex, it’s based on simple components. 

Literature and art help us explore the mysteries of the human mind. But understanding the minute circuitries of the human brain takes science, technology and according to the Obama Administration, quite a bit of federal money. You may have heard the administration is pumping $100 million into getting a detailed understanding of the brain, with the hope of treating or eliminating diseases such as Alzheimer’s. But what you haven’t heard about is the tech involved.

They say the walls have ears. But what if the floors could feel where you are walking and how you are walking? A New York City startup called Tactonic Technologies has revolutionized the computer touch sensor, making them tough enough and cheap enough to turn an entire floor, maybe an entire gym or an entire theme park into a surface that senses footsteps.