While we’re all wiping the champagne-induced sleep from our eyes, inevitably we have to sober up for 2014. The new year will mark new beginnings for all of us, but it will also mark the continuation (and perhaps conclusion) of a number of high-profile tech legal cases. We've chosen to highlight a few cases that could lead to profound changes in the tech landscape in years to come.

Without further ado, here's an update on the top four cases that we have our eyes on (in no order): the collective challenges to the National Security Agency spying, Megaupload, Silk Road, and Lavabit.

NSA spying litigation

The Snowden leaks made public a great deal of information about government surveillance, both at home and abroad. Arguably, the most stunning and controversial program was the first that was revealed: the dragnet collection of every phone number called. That bulk data collection program inspired at least two lawsuits against the government and changed the nature of a third case.

The two lawsuits have had starkly different results; with both now sure to rise to appeals courts, it seems likely that the issue will ultimately reach the US Supreme Court. Certainly, the court as currently composed hasn't been shy about weighing in on the most controversial and politically charged issues in recent years.

Klayman v. NSA was filed literally the day after the first revelations came out in The Guardian. Earlier this month, US District Judge Richard Leon published his widely cited opinion, calling the government's spying technology "almost Orwellian." He rejected the government's key legal precedent: Smith v. Maryland, a 1970s case that allowed the police to track numbers called from a single phone. In the age of the cell phone, wrote Leon, that's too weak a precedent for a massive surveillance program. The bulk data collection, he found, is likely unconstitutional.

But less than two weeks later, a federal judge in New York found just the opposite. In a challenge brought by the ACLU, US District Judge William Pauley ruled the group had no standing to challenge the law. He also found that even though the amount of information collected was "breathtaking," it didn't matter, because phone numbers dialed are simply not protected under the Fourth Amendment.

"Telephones have far more versatility now than when Smith was decided, but this case only concerns their use as telephones," wrote Pauley. "The fact that there are more calls placed does not undermine the Supreme Court's finding that a person has no subjective expectation of privacy in telephony metadata."

A third challenge to NSA surveillance is Jewel v. NSA, a case that was actually filed in San Francisco in 2008. Back then, the Electronic Frontier Foundation believed there was some kind of data dragnet going on due to revelations made by an earlier whistleblower, AT&T technician Mark Klein, although the EFF didn't have the certainty or detail that has become available since the Snowden leaks. That case has been briefed and is awaiting a decision from the district court judge.

Intelligence reformers in Congress believe the political momentum is with them now, and they're going to push hard to ban or sharply limit these programs no matter what happens with these cases. But change on the political level is far from a foregone conclusion; two months ago, a key Senate committee voted 11-4 for a nearly toothless reform bill that would allow the bulk collection to continue. In any case, the opinions of the three federal judges closely examining the surveillance programs is sure to weigh heavily on the minds of policy makers who consider the issue, making these cases ones to watch in 2014.

Megaupload

2014 could prove to be a pivotal year for one of the United States’ most bizarre criminal suspects, Kim Dotcom.

In July 2014, the German-born Dotcom is finally set to have his extradition hearing, which will decide whether he will be forced to decamp from New Zealand to the US to face criminal charges of copyright infringement. Further, he’s awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court of New Zealand to determine whether he should be allowed to have all the evidence that American authorities gathered against him. And to top it off, he’s suing the New Zealand government for millions for illegal surveillance and search, and those allegations will progress in 2014 as well.

The bombastic founder of Megaupload awoke on January 19, 2012 to find that his beloved service had been seized, shuttered, and smashed by the United States government. The massive online “cyberlocker” at one point used more bandwidth than Dropbox. Further, his sprawling New Zealand mansion was raided by local cops, who came armed to the teeth with attack dogs and helicopters, and Dotcom himself was arrested.

Since then, it’s come out that New Zealand authorities overstepped their bounds when it came to conducting surveillance and executing the search on Dotcom’s property. That resulted in the man fingered as an Internet criminal and fugitive by the US getting a formal apology from the Prime Minister of New Zealand. As we reported in 2012, because Dotcom had obtained permanent resident status, he shouldn't have been subjected to government surveillance under local law. (That law has since been changed.) But the New Zealand agency evidently misunderstood the law or failed to verify Dotcom's immigration status.

So how is Dotcom marking the two-year anniversary of the raid?

“There’s going to be an event [in the Auckland area] that’s going to include information about Kim Dotcom’s new political party in New Zealand and some discussion about building a new online music service,” Ira Rothken, Dotcom’s California-based attorney, told Ars.

If it’s anything like last year’s celebration, it will surely be a bizarrely raucous affair.

But Dotcom likely isn’t partying just yet. Over a week ago, on December 23, 2013, the United States government gave Kim Dotcom a bountiful present, a 191-page "Summary of Evidence," (PDF), likely as a tactic to hasten Dotcom’s extradition.

"This reaffirms for us that the US is bringing purely experimental criminal prosecution [...] the conversations that a cloud ISP has and its policies on takedowns and things like infringement are purely civil in nature and not criminal, and it seems to us that the US case has no merit," Rothken added to Ars.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based attorney reiterated that his client should not face criminal charges and, at most, should face a civil case of secondary copyright infringement.

"The US is only interested in cherry-picking the evidence which leads to things like the 191 pages that they published,” Rothken concluded. "We’re waiting for New Zealand Supreme Court to decided as to whether we can get access to the documents in a more fair manner. That coupled with a marked trial date against the New Zealand government for illegal spying and handling a larger number of legal issues arising out of the govt’s legal conduct, that's cause for delay in the extradition hearing. There’s a lot of things that are going on in this case; things would have been much faster if the government had provided more transparency, and they weren’t involved in illegal conduct."

The Silk Road

2014 could also see the conclusion of the saga of Ross Ulbricht, the 29-year-old Texan accused of being the mastermind behind the notorious Silk Road site. If he doesn't reach some kind of agreement with the government, Ulbricht's case will head to trial next year.

The site was seized, and Ulbricht was arrested in San Francisco in October 2013, whereupon he was transferred soon after to New York to await trial. The United States government believes that Ulbricht made $80 million through his infamous site—a substantial portion of that money, in bitcoins, is now in federal hands. Since Ulbricht's arrest, there have been more accusations of murders-for-hire, as well as further indictments of colleagues.

In late November 2013, a federal judge denied Ulbricht’s request to be freed on a $1 million bail.

Sorrin Turner, an assistant United States attorney, wrote in an 11-page letter to the judge, arguing against Ulbricht's bail:

In light of the foregoing, Ulbricht should be detained as a danger to the community. Given his willingness to pay approximately $730,000 for attempts to kill six people, there is no reason to believe that he would not again resort to violence in order to protect himself, whether through intimidating witnesses, recovering proceeds of his criminal activity, or otherwise. It is evident that he cannot be trusted to comply with bail conditions designed to ensure the safety of other persons and the community. Nor has he proffered any meaningful evidence rebutting the presumption that no such conditions exist. . . . Ulbricht has significant ties abroad. His parents own property and hold bank accounts in Costa Rica, and they live there for half the year. His sister resides in Australia. He also has undertaken recent foreign travel – living in Australia and traveling in Southeast Asia from November 2011 to April 2012, traveling to Costa Rica from May to June 2012, and, as noted above, traveling to Dominica in late 2012.

Not much has happened in the case in recent weeks, but Ulbricht has taken on a new attorney, Joshua Dratel, who has not responded to Ars’ request for comment.

The New York-based attorney has a long history with difficult criminal cases: recent clients include Basaaly Maolin, a Somali cab driver in San Diego who was picked up as part of a National Security Agency dragnet and later convicted of providing support to terrorism. Dratel also represented Gary McKinnon, the British hacker who faced extradition charges to the United States and who is now serving his time in his home country.

Meanwhile, a US-born and Slovakia-based activist named Mike Gogulski has created the Ross Ulbricht Defense Fund, which states “We believe that Ross Ulbricht is innocent.”

According to the site’s Twitter account, supporters have raised nearly $10,000 on Crowdtilt in support of Ulbricht—admittedly a small dent in the large legal bill. As for Ulbricht himself? Earlier this month, his fans said that he’s now teaching a yoga class in prison and was moved to a cell with access to direct sunlight.

Lavabit

Just days after it was revealed that NSA leaker Edward Snowden had been using a secure e-mail service called Lavabit, it abruptly shut down. The service's founder, Ladar Levison, made cryptic statements about how he had been forced to abandon the company he'd put ten years of hard work into, lest he become complicit in "crimes against the American people."

Since then, much of the story has been made public. The FBI showed up at Levison's door seeking to tap into his e-mail service to pursue a target, widely believed to be Snowden. Because of the way Lavabit was constructed, there was no way to tap into the e-mail of one particular Lavabit user. Once they learned that, federal agents demanded Lavabit's private SSL key , which would effectively give them the "keys to the kingdom"—the ability to monitor every Lavabit user, in real time.

While Levison has said he's always been willing to help law enforcement go after their specific target, he balked at handing over the private key. Once he was slapped with an order to hand over the key or pay $5,000 per day, he shut down the service, deleting the e-mails belonging to about 400,000 users, including his own.

Now, Levison is appealing the order at the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. It's impossible to miss the fact that Levison's appeal treads over some of the same grounds that the NSA litigation rests on, because the FBI agents are arguing that what they want to install on his e-mail service is basically a "pen register." Thus, their legal grounds are similar to the justification for widespread NSA spying—the "metadata" simply isn't constitutionally protected. Lavabit is arguing that the "pen register" statute can't possibly be broad enough to justify the handover of private SSL keys, which would enable the collection of private data on hundreds of thousands of users.

The two cases won't bear on each other legally, but they both get at the heart of a huge issue in the digital age: how far can law enforcement go in using powerful tools of digital surveillance, based on legal precedent from the days of the telephone? For that reason, the Lavabit case is one to watch in 2014.