Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) showed that its government demands for private information about customers from December 1, 2012, to May 31, 2013, was between 4,000 and 5,000, and 9,000 to 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in those requests. That is a total figure and represents the requests from federal, state and local authorities, and it includes both criminal investigations and national security issues. Here is our full coverage with more detail.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) shows on an official blog post that for the six months ended December 31, 2012, it received between 6,000 and 7,000 criminal and national security warrants, subpoenas and orders affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 consumer accounts from local, state and federal U.S. government entities.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) said in an online post that for the six months ending December 31, 2012 it had user-data requests from all government entities for between 9,000 and 10,000.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) did not reveal the number of security requests, nor did AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). Verizon has its weekly security blog post from Friday June 14, 2013, showing its latest security issues.

The Detroit News has just outlined its story. Bloomberg TV has reported that the city is suspending payments to unsecured creditors today, starting with a $40 million obligation. Its story is not yet out.

The plan that was outlined includes a cessation of payments to unsecured creditors. Some creditors are even reportedly being asked to take 10 cents or less on the dollar. By our own measurement, this is a nothing less than a credit default. Is it a surprise at all that Detroit is ranked as one of the most dangerous cities in America?

By our take, owning Detroit debt has been a risky venture for some time. Now it is about to get a lot riskier. Even though ten cents on the dollar may just be a starting point, this sets a very bad precedent for what other cities can try to do to get out of debt. Detroit suffers from legacy health care and pension debts that are dwarfing current operational costs. Those same retirees have done nothing wrong to the system individually, but those costs are getting in the way of paying for existing services.

If you think that this is just a Detroit issue, many cities just cannot afford another recession that leaves huge holes in its pension funding as well as lower property tax receipts and lower sales tax receipts. The risks that Meredith Whitney brought up after the recession may have at least some more validity after witnessing this.

Stay tuned. This likely is going to become very ugly. By the way, do not expect financial creditors to just take a pass here and accept whatever offers are being made just because it helps out the city of Detroit and its retirees. The creditors gave the city the money, and they are sure as hell going to want back every penny they can get.

Amazon.com shows in its “Movers & Shakers” that “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is now up to #116 in the mass paperback book market. That is a 130% gain from being ranked 267 previously. Then there is the “Nineteen Eighty-Four, Centennial Edition” that moved up in the “Movers & Shakers” section 141% to be at #80 from #193. As far as how much this is up in sales, other sites have tracked it as well:

• The Daily Economist showed that Amazon sales of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” were up nearly 7000% on June 11.
• The LA Times reported on Tuesday that “Nineteen Eighty-Four”‘s sales rank was 213, up from 12,507 just a few days before.

The consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (NYSE: BAH) has seen its stock drop for three straight days after it was found out that NSA contractor Edward Snowden was employed by the firm up until this broke.

The good news is that you are not witnessing a “Nineteen Eighty-Four” act. The bad news is that data is the modern day Big Brother and just about everything you do can be tracked and monitored in some form or fashion. Metadata is more like “First Cousin.”

And now, for the what if …

If you want to truly be a conspiracy theorist, imagine the worse case privacy scenario. Storage is now cheap enough and the technology is now widely available enough that your worst case fears about your privacy could be possible if laws did not protect you. And by “you” it is implied that you are a law-abiding citizen without a record and not under investigation and not tied to bad people.

If government agencies, telecom and wireless, cable companies, internet service providers, credit card merchants, online stores, banks and financial firms, and on and on wanted to conspire against you …

• Every text message you sent could be collected and every phone call could be recorded.
• Every email you send, every search you make, and every site you visit could be logged.
• Every Facebook post and Twitter post can be tracked.
• Any purchase you make can be recorded.
• Every penny coming into and going out of your bank account can be tracked.
• Every toll booth you go through can be known.
• Every registered action or observation of your health or insurance can be tracked if put into a case document by a doctor or a hospital/medical facility.
• Any satellite or tracking system of any car can be used as a tracking mechanism about where your car is driving.
• Your cellphone (dumb or smart) can be used as a geographic tracking device to identify where you are and where you are making calls from.
• Do you want to think about facial recognition and public/private video surveillance cameras?

The technology exists in some form already, either full-scale or with limited scale, for all of these above issues. If you are a known or suspected bad guy, these and many other tools are probably already in use or can be used in some manner. Again, PRISM is not “Nineteen Eighty-Four” if you are considered to be a good guy.

Google Trends shows that “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is the #9 ranked for book searches. Edward Snowden’s girlfriend was the #5 search term by name on Google on Tuesday.

The most recent major failure in critical negotiations between the most senior leaders of China and the United States was when President Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner failed get the People’s Republic to change its successful activity to keep the yuan at levels that hurt the United States and helped the Chinese. Throughout much of 2010, the Treasury Department failed to label China as a currency manipulator in its semiannual report to Congress. The White House thought it better to negotiate a settlement, which did not resolve the problem at all.

As for the summit over the weekend, The New York Times reports:

Even as they pledged to build “a new model” of relations, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China ended two days of informal meetings here on Saturday moving closer on pressuring a nuclear North Korea and addressing climate change, but remaining sharply divided over cyberespionage and other issues that have divided the countries for years.

Although the leaders of the world’s two biggest powers made no public statements on their second day of talks, their disagreements — over cyberattacks as well as arms sales to Taiwan, maritime territorial disputes in the South China Sea and manipulation of the Chinese currency — spilled into the open when senior officials from both countries emerged to describe the meetings in detail.

Cyber spying remains well ahead of the threats of the Chinese military or the nation’s occasional effort to manipulate the price of its exports. The U.S. military, private interests and even the White House have said so. The U.S. government has gone so far as to identify the exact geographic location of many of the cyberattacks from China into America. China’s cyber spying has become more frequent, more brazen and more sophisticated. A convincing case has been made that Chinese hackers could take down a portion of the U.S. energy infrastructure.

Cyber spying is at the heart of China’s threat to America, and apparently that will not change in the foreseeable future.

Verizon is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and amazingly enough it is the best performing of all 30 DJIA stocks on Thursday. The DJIA itself has been fighting between being up and down throughout the day ahead of Friday’s key jobs report. So why is Verizon somehow the best performing DJIA stock on the day with a gain of 3.5% to $49.99? It almost doesn’t seem possible as there are only two other DJIA stocks up 2% and there were roughly 15 of the 30 components trading in the red on the day on last look.

Perhaps some of the gain is that Verizon secured an NFL video distribution pact for its smartphone is acting as a buffet. The reality is that if Verizon is already working with the government then it is more likely that the cost of doing so is already a known event. Handing over the metadata on millions of subscribers is no easy task and it certainly would not come without major costs.

Sometimes you just have to wonder what really drives stocks. The reality is that each and every time these rallies happen outside of gap-ups it boils down to the fact that there are simply many more buyers than sellers at that time. Verizon’s prior close was $48.30 and that was the opening price as well. Today’s move was without any serious market maker gap-up trading.

Verizon’s 52-week trading range is $40.51 to $54.31 and the consensus analyst price target is $54.02 based upon Thomson Reuters estimates. If you look at the Stockcharts.com chart below this the biggest day Verizon has seen in some time.

At last night’s closing price of nearly $35 a share, the Treasury’s sale will bring in about $1.05 billion. In December, GM repurchased 200 million shares for about $8.7 billion. At that time the Treasury said it would sell its remaining 300 million shares in an orderly fashion and dump all its GM shares in 12 to 15 months. The Treasury sold 58.4 million shares in April for a total of about $1.6 billion in its first sale under the plan.

The Treasury disbursed about $51 billion to GM and has recovered about $31.1 billion (including interest payments) before today’s announcement. With fewer than 112 million shares of GM stock remaining, chances are virtually zero that U.S. taxpayers will recoup their entire investment in the U.S. automaker.

The first thing that the public needs to know is that nations do steal and try to steal each others military and defense secrets all the time. This is common practice and the U.S. does it as well. It used to be cloak and dagger theft, then there was bribery. Now the data is being stolen through corporate intranet intrusions and other forms of hack attacks. If US defense contractors are spending billions and billions each year on R&D, arguably more than just on at least some of the taxpayer’s dime, will they be able to go after China in any meaningful way?

All of these hacks have a real business impact on Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LLL), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE: NOC), Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN), and likely every other defense contractor firm in America. These companies are collectively spending billions upon billions of dollars in R&D only to have the details of the end product and advanced findings stolen by China. Can you imagine a knock-off Patriot missile? Or what about a knock-off joint strike fighter or stealth bomber?

Read Also: The 10 Most Expensive Weapons Systems in the World

China is stealing so much and so openly that it is really hard to imagine what defense contractors will do. For starters, the defense contractors do not want to admit that they have been hacked nor that their secrets have been stolen. They obviously cannot nor would not bother filing suit in China because they would be laughed out of the country on the spot. They also cannot just physically use their advanced weaponry to directly attack facilities building and studying the stolen designs. So what can they do?

At a minimum they can petition all relevant international courts and regulatory bodies to stop any international sales of any products with stolen military technology. Will this work? It seems unlikely but maybe there is the Bob Dole answer: “Depends.” U.S. defense contract companies also have to be operating under the belief that many outside the U.S. could care less about the military secrets of the U.S. being stolen and knocked-off.

Defense contractors could try some crazy class action suit against Chinese defense firms here in America. Even if a judgment were handed in their favor, they have to know there is no way to collect any money. So then that leaves the International Court of Justice or other bodies. Again, it feels like more than just a stretch to expect any positive resolution. Then there is the U.S. International Trade Commission or even the federal courts. Yet again, what good will it do?

Read Also: Most Counterfeited Goods in America

If you want to know what is being ripped off, the answer is simple. If it is advanced or valuable, they are stealing it or are trying to steal it.

The F-35 joint strike fighter has been touted as the most expensive jet fighter system ever made, with details of its advanced systems being stolen. In our own “most expensive systems” projection the total cost was over $325 billion yet that is expected to ultimately cost well over $1 trillion to implement. The advanced Patriot missile system secrets have also been targeted. Another target was the Littoral Combat Ship as a multi-billion close to shore operations effort that has been under controversy over costs.

Another concern was the theft of secrets such as THAAD, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, a system for shooting down ballistic missiles. Another missile system was the Aegis ballistic defense missile defense system under the Navy.

Unfortunately, this is one of those crimes that is nearly impossible to crack down upon. The military cannot directly respond, because that would suddenly be war. We also have the conundrum in place that the Chinese want to steal our designs but they have nothing to steal in return. We can’t exactly use their blueprint for how to make labor cheaper domestically. We don’t want their “pollution control” secrets, nor do we want their secrets on how use dangerous chemicals in every day household products.

Read Also: Goldman Sachs Positive on Select Defense Firms

As an American I am upset about this. The problem is that all governments (and many companies) use corporate espionage and many methods to extract government or technology secrets. It is a game that has existed since the dawn of civilization and since discoverers started creating grand inventions.

Many nations envious of the United States probably feel the same way that the army using bronze felt against the first army using iron. Those who first figured out that iron was superior knew they would only have that advantage for a limited time. That being said, what can be done to stop this in the day of electronic communications?

Tell us what you think if you have real suggestions or solutions. This is a serious issue, and one day it may matter more than any of care to think about.

The best comparison of tensions between China and the United States that was never resolved in America’s favor was the yuan-fixing problem, which came to a head more than a year ago. Tim Geithner was dispatched to Beijing after pressure from Congress to resolve the issue. President Obama raised concerns with China’s president at the same time. The clash on the matter still lingers. China’s habit of negotiating without negotiating with the United States is well established, and it always has favored the interests of the People’s Republic.

The new conversations about hacking began in the past few days. According to The New York Times:

The United States and China have agreed to hold regular, high-level talks on how to set standards of behavior for cybersecurity and commercial espionage, the first diplomatic effort to defuse the tensions over what the United States says is a daily barrage of computer break-ins and theft of corporate and government secrets.

The talks will begin in July. Next Friday,President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China, who took office this spring, are scheduled to hold an unusual, informal summit meeting in Rancho Mirage, Calif., that could set the tone for their relationship and help them confront chronic tensions like the nuclear threat from North Korea.

American officials say they do not expect the process to immediately yield a significant reduction in the daily intrusions from China. The head of the United States Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, has said the attacks have resulted in the “greatest transfer of wealth in history.” Hackers have stolen a variety of secrets, including negotiating strategies and schematics for next-generation fighter jets and gas pipeline control systems.

The key point of the report is that “officials say they do not expect the process to immediately yield a significant reduction.” China has broken a series of laws, and in the process compromised U.S. government and corporate interests. The American government says it can prove that, according to a number of media reports. Yet it has decided to push the process slowly.

It is like the yuan problem all over again.

Federal agencies engaged in reviewing Softbank’s offer include the Departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security. Because the deal involves a foreign buyer, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) must also approve Softbank’s proposed purchase.

The Wall Street Journal cites “people familiar with the matter” as saying that “the government is also seeking the right to approve some of Sprint’s equipment purchases and wants the removal of Chinese gear from the Sprint affiliate’s network.”

Earlier this week, Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ: DISH), which has made a competing offer for Sprint, launched a website attacking Softbank’s proposed acquisition of Sprint on national security grounds.

While it is not unheard of that a foreign buyer of a U.S. company must make some accommodation to U.S. national security concerns, none has so far involved giving the federal government approval of a board member. CNOOC Ltd. (NYSE: CEO) sold off assets in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico as part of its acquisition of Nexen.

A more comparable case is the recent acquisition of MetroPCS by Deutsche Telekom A.G. and the creation of T-Mobile US Inc. (NYSE: TMUS). The federal government does not get to approve a director, but it does require that the company provide advance notice of any new vendor of network equipment.

Softbank, which appears to be willing to do anything to get its hands on Sprint, should not acquiesce to this “request.” If the Wall Street Journal’s sources are right, the federal agencies are overreaching here. The national security concerns are real, but there are other, better, less heavy-handed ways of dealing with those concerns.

Softbank should absolutely refuse the federal demand for approval of a board member. That is not the way business is done in the United States.

Sugar producers argue that the price supports for sugar helps support more than 140,000 U.S. jobs in 18 states, and it backed up its arguments with more than $5 million in contributions to candidates for national office in the last election.

The food and beverage industry argues that the government support for U.S. sugar growers forces food and drink makers to pay more for sugar, a cost that is then passed on to consumers. Industry lobbyists kicked in more than $8.3 million in contributions to candidates, political parties, and other groups according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

We noted in early April that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will decide by the first of July whether or not it will purchase up to 400,000 tons of surplus sugar which it will then sell at a discount to ethanol producers. The cost to taxpayers is expected to be around $80 million.

U.S. food and drink makers — and U.S. consumers — pay about 50% more for sugar than the world price according to the WSJ.