The study, titled “The growing impact of full disk encryption on digital forensics,” illustrates the difficulty that CSI teams have in obtaining enough digital data to build a solid case against criminals.

The paper does go on to suggest some ways to ameliorate these issues, though: Better awareness at the evidence-gathering stage would help, but it also suggests “on-scene forensic acquisition” of data, which involves ripping unencrypted data from volatile, live memory (with the cryogenic RAM freezing technique, presumably).

A group of Internet activists gathered last week in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel to begin planning an ambitious project—they hope to overcome electronic surveillance and censorship by creating a whole new Internet. The group, which coordinates its efforts through the Reddit social networking site, calls its endeavor The Darknet Project (TDP).

A growing number of independent open source software projects have also emerged to fill the need for darknet technology. Many of these projects are backed by credible non-profit organizations and segments of the security research community. Such projects could find a useful ally in the TDP if they were to engage with the growing community and help mobilize its members in a constructive direction.

DARPA reports that more than $300 billion worth of satellites are in the geosynchronous orbit, many retired due to failure of one component even if 90% of the satellite works just as well as the day it was launched. DARPA's Phoenix program seeks to develop technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components such as antennas or solar arrays from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost.

The Village Base Station is a low-power, easy to deploy tool developed by Berkeley professor Kurtis Heimerl to create a GSM cellular data network in areas with limited power and network resources.

Potential uses are numerous: individuals in rural areas with limited Internet access would benefit from these pop-up cellular data connections, and it could serve as a game-changer for areas of the developing world with limited network access.

The next USB 3.0 specification will provide up to 100 watts of power to devices, allowing users to power some of the more demanding gadgets on their desks without additional power supplies.

Since the new spec raises USB 3.0 power input and output by two orders of magnitude, the slate of products the ports could power is much larger and includes monitors, desk lamps, and even notebook PCs.

A team of Taiwanese scientists have developed "i2R e-paper", which apparently needs no backlighting and thus uses no electricity.

The Institute has recently passed the tech over to a Taiwanese company and reckons the product could hit markets in a couple of years, where it has potential to be implemented in e-books and electronic billboards.

Late last month, officials from the Army and from Boeing presented to the press what appeared to be a working version of a mobile laser cannon.

The actual ray gun is being built under an entirely separate Army program - one that won't be complete for another five years. Integrating the truck and the laser could take another year or two on top of that. In other words, don't expect a working laser cannon until at least 2017.

Their pen dispenses a silver solution that allows the user to draw functioning electrical circuits on a wide variety of surfaces. Here a flexible array of LEDs was mounted on paper, and then interconnected by hand-drawn silver ink lines.

"Pen-based printing allows one to construct electronic devices 'on-the-fly', using very low cost, ubiquitous printing tools," said Jennifer Lewis, one of the lead researchers and director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois.

Funded primarily by the personal savings of group members and a grant from the National Science Foundation, residents of Jalalabad have built the FabFi network: an open-source system that uses common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles.

Jalalabad's longest link is currently 2.41 miles, between the FabLab and the water tower at the public hospital in Jalalabad, transmitting with a real throughput of 11.5Mbps (compared to 22Mbps ideal-case for a standards compliant off-the-shelf 802.11g router transitting at a distance of only a few feet). The system works consistently through heavy rain, smog and a couple of good sized trees.

A student at the Royal College of Art in London, Hannes Harms, has come up with a design for an edible RFID chip, part of a system he calls NutriSmart.

The idea is that it could send nutritional data and ingredients for people who have allergies, or calorie-counting for those on diets, or maybe even telling your fridge when the food has gone off. It could even be used to market organic food, with a chip holding data about the origin of that tuna steak you just bought.