Anti-WiFi wallpaper that lets cellular and radio through

French researchers have developed a special wallpaper that can block WiFi signals, preventing them from being broadcast beyond the confines of an office or apartment. Unlike other signal-blocking technologies, this anti-WiFi wallpaper only blocks a select set of frequencies used by wireless LANs, and allows cellular phones and other radio waves through. the wallpaper should be available for sale in 2013.

UK snooping law plans may come into contradiction with EC

The plans of the UK government of increasing the police online surveillance powers under the draft Communications Data Bill (CDB), also known as the Snoopers' Chart, might come into contradiction with the European Commission's position on citizens' rights.

If approved, the Communications Data Bill will place innocent citizens under continuous surveillance having all their communications and online activity monitored, all of the time. The government would store information about who's messaging whom, who's a friend to whom on the Internet or what people are searching for on search engines. Police and HM Revenue and Customs officers would have the power to access this information without a judicial warrant.

According to the information appeared in mass-media, the Home Office had a meeting with the largest electronic communications providers in UK that included discussions on the hardware which companies will have to use to monitor traffic flowing through their systems.

Things get more complicated with the design of the system to identify and store traffic data from the webmail services. Thus, the ISPs might have "to route the data via a government-approved 'black box' which will decrypt the message, separate the content from the 'header data', and pass the latter back to the ISP for storage."

It might be a good time to start using 3rd party smtp services and tools like PGP or GPG.

European trade committee voted to reject ACTA

Members of the European Parliament voted to reject the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) by 19 votes to 12. ACTA is a trade agreement, negotiated in secret between Canada, the USA, China, Japan and the EU. If approved, ACTA would allow major corporations and politicians to censor parts of the internet.

Under ACTA, the only forms of communications allowed on the internet would be those government bureaucrats approve.

From its inception, ACTA has been shrouded in secrecy. In the USA, ACTA was signed by president Obama on October 1 2011, despite serious Constitutional concerns. The White House circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as "executive agreement," although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization. In the EU, EU Commissioner Karel De Gucht explained on television that the details of what was being suggested by the corporations, that lobbied for ACTA, could not be made public because it would be damaging to the reputations of those corporations.

The supporters of ACTA may have lost this battle, but we must remain vigilant. The idea is not dead, only the specific wording of ACTA. However, as we have seen when in several European countries, the people voted against the Lisbon Treaty, the EU simply changed some of the wording and packaging and later pushed it through anyway. If they manage to do the same thing with ACTA, consumers, small business owners and anyone with an opinion the current government does not like, will wish they had done something to stop ACTA when they still had the chance.

If you have a Twitter account, take a second and use the hashtag #StopACTA to voice your opposition.

Apple wins U.S. sales injunction against Samsung Galaxy Tab

Apple, unable to compete based on the quality of its products, has won a preliminary injunction barring U.S. sales of Samsung's iPad rival, the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Samsung will likely appeal the ruling, though a spokesperson was unavailable for comment at the time of writing to confirm the company's next move.

A Samsung statement said:

Should Apple continue to make legal claims based on such a generic design patent, design innovation and progress in the industry could be restricted.

Apple has a long history of using extremely broad patents to undermine its competitors and hinder innovation. No wonder the #BoycottApple hashtag is winning ground on Twitter.