►The FTC is investigating whether smartphone apps are violating children’s privacy rights [1] by collecting personal information. Initial research found that of 200 randomly selected children’s apps, 60 percent transmitted the user’s device ID back to the app developers or advertisers. The device ID is a “pathway to more personal information, like a person's name, phone number and email address,” the Associated Press reports. More than a dozen of the apps also transmitted the user’s location data [2].

►Police are looking for a person of Pinterest. The Pottstown, Pennsylvania, police department says arrests of people with warrants have increased 57 percent [3]after a newspaper started posting “wanted” mug shots on Pinterest. Pottstown police Capt. F. Richard Drumheller says people have even called to find out how to turn themselves in, NPR reports.

►After 9-11 attacks on Sikhs increased [4], but the seven categories in the FBI's hate crime statistics [5] that cover religion don’t include attacks against Sikhs, which are grouped into the “other” category or classified as anti-Muslim attacks. Sikh advocacy groups met with the FBI’s Advisory Policy Board’s Uniform Crime Reporting Subcommittee earlier this year and requested Sikh bias be added as a category. “Based on recommendations from the subcommittee, the FBI’s crime-reporting program is researching options for two topic papers to be presented for deliberation at the spring 2013 Advisory Policy Board meeting,” the Sikh News Network reports [6]. The new category wouldn’t be added until 2015.

►In other news, domestic violence-related murders [7] are on the rise in Dallas, say police. ♦ The U.S. Secret Service is investigating a possible data breach from 2008 [8] where an employee left computer tapes containing staff “phone numbers, bank account numbers, passport numbers, and biometric information” on the metro.♦ And SC Magazine reports on the year's top five legal developments [9].