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High tech vs. coronavirus: Using artificial intelligence, analytics are weapons SAS brings to the fight – WRAL Tech Wire

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CARY The ongoing spread of the coronavirus is sparking urgent searches for a vaccine to counteract it. Several Triangle firms such as Lenovo and Heat Biologics have joined the fight. Also bringing powerful and emerging technology to the battle is software and data analytics giantSAS, a heavy investor in artificial intelligence and a world leader of tools to extract information from so-called big data information gathered from many sources.

In an exclusive Q&A with WRAL TechWire,Theresa Do, Support Manager for Federal Healthcare at SAS, talks about the potential uses of AI, machine learning and analytics to combat the corornavirus and future health threats. Do also is a Professor ofEpidemiology & Biostatistics at George Washington Univ. in Washington, DC.

Developing new treatments and creating vaccines and antiviral medications for newly discovered viruses is a difficult and time-consuming process, traditionally involving lots of trial and error. AI and advanced analytics can help improve the application of current treatments and speed up the development of new ones.

Theresa Do

For example, AI specifically deep learning is currently being used to help radiologists make better treatment decisions based on medical imaging. Chest x-rays of patients infected with the new coronavirus may serve as input into AI models that can help physicians make faster diagnoses as the outbreak continues. AI can also help here by examining data from similar viral diseases and using that data to predict what types of vaccines and medicines might be more effective.

Data and analytics are the lifeblood for decision-making during infectious-disease outbreaks.Analytics can provide insights about the spread of a disease and the effectiveness of public health action, which can improve the response.The more information people have about case counts, mortality rates, how a disease spreads and how contagious it is, the better decisions they can make to limit, prevent and treat the disease. Public health and scientific data must be shared freely and rapidly with stakeholders and key decision makers so they can take action.

For decades, SAS has provided analytics software to public health and government agencies in the United States and around the world, helping them improve the health and well-being of their citizens. Governments hold much of the critical data needed to understand current conditions during an outbreak, but analytics companies like SAS offer an ability to synthesize this data with other non-government data and specialized tools to get the most insights from this unified data. These data-driven insights support better, faster government and public health decision-making. Events like the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak require public and private sectors to work closely together to limit disease spread and save lives.

Collaboration, integration and rapid information sharing are essentialto improve response and recovery for infectious disease outbreaks.Gone are the days when only governments and public health organizations had valuable data to fight epidemics. Disparate, non-traditional data setscan serve as sentinel sources everything from travel and census data, to demographic information and animal migration patternscan be applied to the public health threats. But the key is how to take advantage of all this data and emerging new data like genetic sequences.

Advanced analytics and AI (particularly machine learning) are essential tools to put data to work and save lives. With more and diverse data sets, the challenge is to synthesize everything to derive the insights needed to make decisions. Asolid data management ecosystem and platform where the data can be stored, cleaned, scaled and shared among key stakeholders and decision makers is essential. So, its not just about the data, but also how that data can be used effectively in global collaboration to fight the emergence and spread of disease.

Finally, having enough good data is a challenge when a new, or novel virus is causing a disease outbreak. Advanced analytics are only as good as the data they can explore, analyze and sift through. For COVID-19, collaboration will continue to improve as more data is shared.

Analytics has an important and growing role to play in the detection and monitoring of all viral-disease outbreaks. Critical insights about disease spread and the effectiveness of public health action can be derived from analytical approaches, which helps decision-makers adjust and adapt their strategies and responses.

AI and machine learning in particular are valuable tools for healthcare professionals and policymakers to reduce or better manage the impact of emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19. Machine learning is designed to consider large amounts of data, find patterns in that data and detect anomalies, and in many cases offer predictions.

AI can help health authorities better detect infectious disease outbreaks by analyzing sentinel data sources for early warning of potential threats.AI can be applied to models on common themes or topics to help identify common symptoms among new and evolving public health threats. Moreover, AI can help to automate data analysis, identify patterns and build models of risk factors to help in scenario analysis of transmission. And when it comes to identifying paths of transmission, AI can aid in the search for a host and/or index case, as well as tracking possible contacts.

When SARS emerged, there were fewer data sources that could be leveraged, such as social media, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and technologies to help with diagnostics. Phone apps for tracking of health data and diagnostics were not yet present. (The iPhone came out in 2007, four years after SARS broke out). With the advent of the iPhone and new types of apps and technologies, scientists can leverage a lot more data for analysis in addition to the available sentinel sources.

Today there are more ways that people can communicate to quickly distribute public health prevention efforts and quell misinformation regarding public health threats such as the some of the misinformation around COVID-19. Providers have more information at their fingertips via technology versus when SARS first broke out during the early stages, as well as the availability of the internet. However, with COVID-19, there is still a lot more to be uncovered and learned.

For any infectious disease outbreak, good responses need good data that can be shared readily and acted upon quickly. That was true then for SARS, and its true today for COVID-19.

Lenovo, Intel team up to accelerate analysis of coronavirus genome in vaccine search

Morrisville-based Heat Biologics joins global effort to discover coronavirus vaccine

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High tech vs. coronavirus: Using artificial intelligence, analytics are weapons SAS brings to the fight - WRAL Tech Wire

New research on adoption of Artificial intelligence within IoT ecosystem – ELE Times

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element14, the Development Distributor, has published new research on the Internet of Things (IoT) which confirms strong adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within IoT devices, alongside new insights on key markets, enablers and concerns for design engineers working in IoT.

AIoT is the major emerging trend from the survey, demonstrating the beginning of the process to build a true IoT ecosystem. Research showed that almost half (49%) of respondents already use AI in their IoT applications, with Machine Learning (ML) the most used technology (28%) followed by cloud-based AI (19%). This adoption of AI within IoT design is coupled with a growing confidence to take the lead on IoT development and an increasing number of respondents seeing themselves as innovators. However, it is still evident that some engineers (51%) are hesitant to adopt AI due to being new to the technology or because they require specialized expertise in how to implement AI in IoT applications.

Other results from element14s second Global IoT Survey show that security continues to be the biggest concern designers consider in IoT implementation. Although 40% cited security as their biggest concern in 2018 and this has reduced to 35% in 2019, it is still ranked significantly higher than connectivity and interoperability due to the type of data collected from things (machines) and humans, which can be very sensitive and personal. Businesses initiating new IoT projects treat IoT security as a top priority by implementing hardware and software security to protect for any kind of potential threat. Ownership of collected data is another important aspect of security, with 70% of respondents preferring to own the data collected by an edge device as opposed to it being owned by the IoT solution provider.

The survey also shows that although many engineers (46%) still prefer to design a complete edge-to-cloud and security solution themselves, openness to integrate production ready solutions, such as SmartEdge Agile, SmartEdge IIoT Gateway, which offer a complete end-to-end IoT Solution, has increased. 12% more respondents confirmed that they would consider third party devices in 2019 than 2018, particularly if in-house expertise is limited or time to market is critical.

A key trend from last years survey results has continued in 2019 and survey results suggest that the growing range of hardware available to support IoT development continues to present new opportunities. More respondents than ever are seeing innovation coming from start-ups (33%, up from 26%), who benefit from the wide availability of modular solutions and single board

computers available on the market. The number of respondents adopting off-the-shelf hardware has also increased to 54% from 50% in 2018.

Cliff Ortmeyer, Global Head of Technical Marketing for Farnell and element14 says: Opportunities within the Internet of Things and AI continue to grow, fueled by access to an increasing number of hardware and software solutions which enable developers to bring products to market more quickly than ever before, and without the need for specialized expertise. This is opening up IoT to new entrants, and giving more developers the opportunity to innovate to improve lives. element14 provides access to an extensive range of development tools for IoT and AI which provide off-the shelf solutions to common challenges.

Despite the swift integration of smart devices such as Amazons Alexa and Google Home into daily life, evidencing a widespread adoption of IoT in the consumer space, in 2019 we saw a slight shift in focus away from home automation with the number of respondents who considered it to be the most impactful application in IoT in the next 5 years reducing from 27% to 22%. Industrial automation and smart cities both gained, at 22% and 16% respectively, underpinned by a growing understanding of the value that IoT data can bring to operations (rising from 44% in 2018 to 50% in 2019). This trend is witnessed in industry where more manufacturing facilities are converting to full or semi-automation in robotic manufacturing and increasing investment in predictive maintenance to reduce production down times.

The survey was conducted between September and December 2019 with 2,015 respondents participating from 67 countries in Europe, North America and APAC. Responses were predominantly from engineers working on IoT solutions (59%), as well as buyers of components related to IoT solutions, Hobbyists and Makers.

element14 provides a broad range of products and support materials to assist developers designing IoT solutions and integrating Artificial Intelligence. Products are available from leading manufacturers such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Beagleboard. element14s IoT hub and AI pages also provide access to the latest products for development and insights and white papers to support the design journey. Readers can view an infographic covering the full results of the element14 Global IoT Survey at Farnell in EMEA, Newark in North America and element14 in APAC.

For more information, visit http://www.element14.com

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New research on adoption of Artificial intelligence within IoT ecosystem - ELE Times

The Pentagon’s AI Shop Takes A Venture Capital Approach to Funding Tech – Defense One

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The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center will take a Series A, B, approach to building tech for customers, with product managers and mission teams.

The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center will take a Series A, B, approach to building tech for customers, with product managers and mission teams. By PatrickTucker

Military leaders who long to copy the way Silicon Valley funds projects should know: the Valley isnt the hit machine people think it is, says Nand Mulchandani, chief technical officer of the Pentagons Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. The key is to follow the right venture capitalmodel.

Mulchandani, a veteran of several successful startups, aims to ensure JAICs investments in AI software and tools actually work out. So he is bringing a very specific venture-capital approach to thePentagon.

Heres the plan: when a DoD agency or military branch asks JAIC for help with some mission or activity, the Center will assign a mission team of, essentially, customer representatives to figure out what agency data might be relevant to theproblem.

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Next, the JAIC will assign a product manager not DoDs customary program manager, but a role imported from the techindustry.

He or she handles the actual building of the product, not the administrative logistics of running a program. The product manager will gather customer needs, make those into product features, work with the program manager, ask, What does the product do? How is it priced? Mulchandani told Defense One in a phone conversation onThursday.

The mission team and product manager will take a small part of the agencys data to the software vendors or programs that they hire to solve the problem. These vendors will need to prove their solution works before scaling up to take on all availabledata.

Were going to have a Series A, a seed amount of money. You [the vendor] get a half a million bucks to curate the data, which tends to be the problem. Do the problem x in a very tiny way, taking sample data, seeing if an algorithm applies to it, and then scale it, Mulchandani saidon Wednesday at an event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, orINSA.

In the venture capital industry, you take a large project, identify core risk factors, like team risk, customer risk, etc. you fund enough to take care of these risks and see if you can overcome the risks through a prototype or simulation, before you try to scale, he addedlater.

The customer must also plan to turn the product into a program of record or give it some other life outside of theJAIC.

Thats very different from the way the Defense Department pays for tech today, he said. The unit of currency in the DoD seems to be Well, this was a great idea; lets stick a couple million bucks on it, see what happens. Were not doing that way anymore he said onWednesday.

The JAIC is working with the General Services Administration Centers of Excellence to create product manager roles in DoD and to figure out how to scale small solutions up. Recently, some members of the JAIC and the Centers of Excellence participated in a series of human-centered design workshops to determine essential roles and responsibilities for managing data assets, across areas that the JAIC will be developing products, like cybersecurity, healthcare, predictive maintenance, and business automation, according to thestatement.

Mulchandani urges the Pentagon not to make a fetish of Silicon Valley. Without the right business and funding processes, many venture startups fail just as badly as poorly thought out government projects. You just dont hear aboutthem.

When you end up in a situation where theres too much capital chasing too few good ideas that are real, you end up in a situation where you are funding a lot of junk. What ends up happening [in Silicon Valley] is many of those companies just fail, he said Wednesday. The problem in DOD is similar. How do you apply discipline up front, on a venture model, to fund the good stuff as opposed to funding a lot of junk and then seeing two or three products that becomesuccessful?

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The Pentagon's AI Shop Takes A Venture Capital Approach to Funding Tech - Defense One

HKMA’s paper on Artificial Intelligence in the banking industry – Lexology

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Last year, the HKMA commissioned a study into the application of Artificial Intelligence technology (AI) in the Hong Kong banking industry. The report, published on 23 December 2019, summarises insights from academics and industry experts on AI. One key finding was that almost 90% of the surveyed retail banks had adopted or planned to adopt AI applications. 95% of banks which had adopted AI expressed their intention to use AI to shape their corporate strategy, mainly prompted by the need to improve customer experience, stay cost effective and better manage risk.

To help the banking industry understand the risk and potential of AI, the report covered the latest development trends, potential use cases, status of AI development in banking, challenges and considerations in designing and deploying the technology, as well as the market outlook.

This report is the first in a series of AI-related publications produced by the HKMA. The full report can be accessed here.

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HKMA's paper on Artificial Intelligence in the banking industry - Lexology

Radisys delivers its Engage AI-based media apps on OpenNESS to accelerate 4G and 5G networks innovation – Help Net Security

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Radisys, a global leader of open telecom solutions, announced the deployment of the Radisys Engage portfolio of digital engagement and AI-based real-time media applications on Open Network Edge Services Software (OpenNESS), an open source multi-access edge compute (MEC) platform initiative led by Intel to accelerate innovation and unique experiences on 4G/LTE and 5G networks.

The advent of 5G and massive IoT applications require ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth, and real-time access to radio network resources, leading to the rise of multi-access edge computing to enable virtualized applications to be deployed on compute resources closest to the edge.

However, the lack of broad industry standardization for MEC has led to fragmentation in the development and deployment of MEC platforms, thereby hindering wide-scale adoption.

The OpenNESS platform abstracts complex networking technology and provides microservices/APIs resulting in an easy-to-use toolkit to develop and deploy applications at the network edge.

Radisys Engage advanced real-time media applications are available on the OpenNESS platform, enabling new digital experiences.

We are pleased to deliver a complete and open MEC platform that comes with ready to deploy edge media applications, said Adnan Saleem, CTO, Software and Cloud Solutions, Radisys.

Through collaboration with Intel, our solution will help service providers to realize the ultra-low latency benefits of 5G, while enabling rich new applications like augmented reality, localized collaboration, improved security, and more.

Intel is collaborating with the Network Builders ecosystem to deliver open solutions that enable service providers to accelerate innovation while controlling complexity and costs, said Renu Navale, Vice President & General Manager, Edge Computing and Ecosystem Enabling at Intel.

By adopting and integrating OpenNESS Intels open source software for network edge, Radisys Engage media-centric applications provide the industry with a unique platform for real-time media applications and services.

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Radisys delivers its Engage AI-based media apps on OpenNESS to accelerate 4G and 5G networks innovation - Help Net Security

New Bill Would Strengthen Protections for Journalists Over Classified Info – The Intercept

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Almost a year after the Trump administration unsealed an indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, two progressive members of Congress are trying to prevent a World War I-era secrecy law from being used to investigate and prosecute journalists for publishing classified information.

The legislation to amend the 1917 Espionage Act was introduced by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden in the Senate and California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna in the House of Representatives. Wyden and Khanna told The Intercept they crafted the legislation to preserve the governments need for secrecy while strengthening protections for members of the press and expanding legal channels for government whistleblowers.

When I think about espionage, Im thinking about somebody like Aldrich Ames, Wyden said in an interview, referring to the CIA officer who passed secrets to the KGB before his arrest in 1994. What my bill does is refocus the Espionage Act to the core issue, which is ensuring that the more than four million government employees and contractors with a security clearance dont violate their oaths by divulging government secrets.

The Espionage Act makes it a crime to for anyone to share secrets relating to the national defense with people who are not authorized to hear them. The statute makes no exception for members of the press who obtain and report classified information, but there is broad agreement among legal scholars that prosecuting a journalist for unearthing and publishing government secrets would violate the First Amendment.

The Wyden-Khanna bill would narrow the scope of the lawtoprimarily target offenders with current or expired security clearances, as well as any agents of a foreign government to whom they may pass information. Members of the press or the publiccould be prosecuted if they committed a separate crime in the course of obtaining the information,but not for soliciting information or for speech activity like publishing.

Journalists shouldnt be prosecuted simply for getting information from a source or transmitting that information, Khanna said in an interview. Hackers who break the law to get secret information should be prosecuted, he said, but to prosecute those who obtain such information legally would be tantamount to criminalizing speech.

The bill also removes the broadest language in the Espionage Act, which allows anyone to be charged for conspiring with leakers. Press freedom advocates have long worried that that part of the act could be abused by overzealous prosecutors to criminalize standard journalistic practices such as asking for information.

In April 2019, the government unsealed an indictment against Assange charging him with one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The indictment alleged that as part of his relationship with former U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning, he hadoffered to help crack a password on a Defense Department computer system. Around that time, Manning transmitted documents to Assange that WikiLeaks would later publish: case files of men detained at Guantanamo Bay and documents revealing torture and civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bulk-release tactics of the transparency platform would later attract widespread criticism for exposing the identities of U.S. government informants and collaborators and putting them in danger.

A month after the Trump administrations first indictment, prosecutors added 17 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, which involved Assange soliciting the classified material from Manning. The indictment included three counts of having communicated documents by publishing them on the internet.

This is the first time the government, to my knowledge, has charged anyone with the pure communication of information under the Espionage Act, and that is very concerning, said Kathleen Ruane, senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. Thats pure communication of information. Thats reporting.

Khanna told The Intercept that the new bill wouldnt stop the prosecution of Assange for his alleged role in hacking a government computer system, but would make it impossible for the government to use the Espionage Act to charge anyone solely for publishing classified information.

But while the bill creates protections for publishers, it doesnt address a key complaint of press freedom and civil liberties advocates: that over the past decade, the Espionage Act has served as the governments weapon of choice to punish unauthorized press leaks.

Instead, the bill expands carve-outs that allow security clearance holders to more freely communicate as whistleblowers with members of Congress, inspectors general, and other government regulatory bodies that oversee technology and privacy. The Espionage Act includes language suggesting that classified information can only be sent to Congress by lawful demand of a congressional committee; the new measure would allow clearance holders to provide information to any member of Congress without a specific request or demand.

Americans who learn about waste, fraud, and abuse, even if its classified, ought to be able to go to any member of Congress with that information, Wyden said. I just think thats the proper way to proceed.

Throughout the 20th century, it was extremely rare for the government to bring criminal cases against those accused of sharing government secrets with journalists. That changed under the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. Obamas Justice Department famously brought more Espionage Act cases against whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined.

Donald Trump has continued the practice, using the Espionage Act to prosecute government employees and contractors for allegedly sharing information about Russian hacking into U.S. state election infrastructure, leaking information about the U.S. drone program, and other sensitive topics.

Khanna told The Intercept that revealing classified information should still be a crime for those with clearances, but that prosecutors and judges should have discretion to weigh the consequences of the leak against the motives of the source.

I dont think we can have a situation where people who have security clearances can simply leak information in violation of their oath and their responsibility, Khanna said. That could put lives in danger in many cases.

Alex Abdo, the litigation director at the Knight Institute at Columbia University, told The Intercept that the bill was a crucial effort to ensure national security journalists are protected while doing their jobs.

These protections for journalists are vital, Abdo said in an email. It is also vital that Congress enact additional protections for national-security whistleblowers, who risk personal and professional sanction to expose government malfeasance and corruption.

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How Swedish authorities invented the rape charge against Julian Assange – Pressenza, International Press Agency

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Thanks to the investigative work and perseverance of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, the truth is gradually being revealed.

One of the most successful false news stories of the last decade is the story of two women who filed a rape complaint against Julian Assange with the Swedish police in August 2010, and that the founder of Wikileaks escaped from the Swedish justice system by fleeing to England. The advantage of the Swiss Nils Melzer is that he speaks fluent Swedish, and was then able to consult the original documents. And then, to his amazement, it turned out that the course of events was quite different.

The rewriting of a womans statement.

In fact, as Melzer stated recently in an important interview with the Swiss online magazine Republik, to which I shall refer below, one of the two women, who was simply accompanied by the other, was horrified when the police before her eyes began to draw up a rape report from her statements. She, as she pointed out on several occasions, had sexual relations with Assange on a totally consensual basis, and only contacted the authorities to find out whether it would be possible to force him to take an AIDS test. As soon as she realized that the police were starting to do something completely different, she interrupted the interrogation in a state of shock and left the room. However, only a few hours later, the headline appeared in large letters in the Swedish tabloid press: Julian Assange was accused of double rape.

In that regard, Melzer has an explosive document an e-mail from the supervisor of the consensually appointed police officer, in which he asks him to rewrite the interrogation protocol correctly. This appears to be due to the fact that the Public Prosecutors Office was already closing the case, as the womans statements were not sufficient for an accusation of rape.

As the original text of the document was deleted from the computer, it was not possible to restore it. However, its content can be easily guessed from the initial reaction of the Public Prosecutors Office: because according to Melzer, the Public Prosecutors Office stated that although S. W.s statements were credible, they did not give any indication of a crime.

The woman could also have sent a text message to a friend at the police station: she had the impression that the police were only interested in getting their hands on Assange.

The second womans announcement.

The second woman plays an obscure role, at first, she was just an escort. According to Melzer, she not only suggested to the first woman to go to the police, but also directed her to the guard post where one of her friends was on duty. This is the same person who at that time and this was already a legally incorrect procedure conducted the interrogation. Later, this police friend also forged the document.

event/830197/christian-schachreiter-lugenvaters-kinder

However, only one day after the first woman was questioned, the second woman made her own statement and reported that Assange had slept with her without protection and against her will. According to Swedish law, this would indeed amount to rape. However, Mr. Melzer highlights the contradictions in the statement. Let us also look at the chronology: curiously, the Swedish media reported a double rape before this second woman made her statement.

How Assange tried to confront Swedish justice

Thanks to Melzers research, the claim that the founder of Wikileaks systematically fled Swedish justice is clearly false. According to Melzer, it is the opposite. Mr Assange contacted the Swedish authorities on several occasions because he wanted to talk about these allegations. The authorities weighed in the balance.

Thanks to the investigation and the perseverance of the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, the truth is gradually coming out: The Swedish authorities were never interested in Assanges testimony. They deliberately left him in the dark. But it also allowed them to control him. Imagine facing rape charges for nine and a half years by an entire state team and the media but not being able to defend yourself because the charges were never brought.

Thanks to the research and perseverance of the UN special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, the truth is gradually coming out: the two women obtained a legal representative who was by chance the partner of the former minister of justice, Thomas Bodstrm. He maintained a confidential relationship with the United States and has worked closely with the CIA. In the meantime, Assange requested permission to leave the country and even received authorisation.

Englands intervention

During the flight to Berlin, his laptops disappeared from his checked baggage. Scandinavian Airlines refused to provide any information about this. The founder of Wikileaks subsequently travelled to London, from where he continued to offer his cooperation to the Swedish judicial system. Until he learned of a possible plot against him. According to Melzer, From that moment on, his lawyer said that Assange was willing to testify in Sweden, but demanded diplomatic assurances that Sweden would not extradite him to the United States. However, the Swedes consistently refused to give such an assurance.

At the same time, however, it was legally difficult for Swedish justice to keep the case on hold for years without closing it and bringing charges. Today, unusually, the British justice system has intervened to prevent the case from being closed.According to Melzer, yes, the British, that is the Crown Prosecution Service, wanted to prevent the Swedes from closing the case at all costs. But the British would have to be happy if they no longer had to guard the Ecuadorian embassy at a cost of millions of dollars of taxpayers money to prevent Assange from fleeing.

Why the United States is afraid of Assange

The background to all these strange events is obvious to Melzer. He points out that at the time Assange was systematically denouncing the serious war crimes of the United States in collaboration with the New York Times, The Guardian and Spiegel. Only a few months earlier, in April 2010, WikiLeaks had released the Murder video footage that US whistleblower Chelsea Manning had handed over to the organisation. The video shows members of the US military laughing as they shot people in Baghdad from a helicopter, including two members of the Reuters news agency. They were also shooting at the wounded, the people helping them and children.

No criminal proceedings were brought against any of the soldiers. On the contrary, the United States gave a directive to all allied countries to initiate all possible criminal actions against the founder of Wikileaks.

If Assange is extradited to the United States, Melzer believes that he will not be subject to any legal proceedings. He will be brought before the infamous spy court, from which no one has ever been acquitted, and the trial will be held behind closed doors and on the basis of secret evidence. Assange faces up to 175 years in prison. Melzer concludes that none of the war criminals in the Yugoslav civil war has been sentenced to more than 45 years.

How journalists were misled

The fact that all this has gradually come to public attention is less due to the effectiveness of the media which, on the contrary, has long refused to take note of Melzers research findings than to the perseverance and tireless work of various activists, as well as the fact that they managed to attract celebrities to the demonstrations, solidarity meetings, signature campaigns and calls for Assanges release.

Although the press was very busy first with Assange and Wikileaks, the rape story that had been launched also had some success: it was assumed without a doubt that it was already true, and then, for many years, the fate of Wikileaks founder, who had fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was received with some indifference.

They often allow themselves to be manipulated by the arguments of the United States: that Assange is not a real journalist, has put people in danger with his publications, and is an accomplice of Putin. But these ideas about Assange, if examined more closely, are only a variant of the diversionary manoeuvre described by Melzer, namely that he has discovered war crimes and that this is a crime, in order to pass himself off as a criminal and thus eliminate the real scandal.

Unlike many of her colleagues, a correspondent for the German Taz gave with minimal words of self-criticism: Bettina Gaus admits today that she too has fallen under the spell of the image of events that has been broadcast in public without ever being questioned. Little by little, the wind is changing.

And although the Reporters Without Borders organisation remains reluctant to explicitly label Assange as a journalist, instead of simply attesting to his journalistic activity, worldwide vigils were organised in January for the founder of Wikileaks, in which journalists associations also participated. A positive contribution of the news magazine ZDF is that it has tried to make the scandal discovered by Melzer known to a wider public.

Published for the first time by Ortwin Rosner on streifzueg.org and adopted by our media partner Untergrund-Blttle.

Translation Pressenza London

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How Swedish authorities invented the rape charge against Julian Assange - Pressenza, International Press Agency

What next in the world of post-quantum cryptography? – Ericsson

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Research in quantum computers is advancing quickly and researchers recently claimed to have reached quantum supremacy, in other words, the ability of quantum computers to perform a calculation out of reach of even the most powerful classical supercomputers.

However, any claims that quantum computers are close to cracking any practically used cryptosystems are highly exaggerated. Such powerful quantum computers are very likely several decades away, if indeed they will ever be built. Many significant technical advances are still required before a large-scale, practical quantum computer can be achieved, and some commentators even doubt whether such a scenario will ever be possible.

What we do know, however, is that large-scale cryptography-breaking quantum computers are highly unlikely to develop during the next decade. Yet, in spite of this, systems which need very long-term protection such as government systems with classified information or root certificates with very long lifetimes must nevertheless start preparing to replace todays asymmetric algorithms.

In traditional cryptography, there are two forms of encryption: symmetric and asymmetric.

Most of today's computer systems and services such as digital identities, the Internet, cellular networks, and crypto currencies use a mixture of symmetric algorithms like AES and SHA-2 and asymmetric algorithms like RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman) and elliptic curve cryptography.

The asymmetric parts of such systems would very likely be exposed to significant risk if we experience a breakthrough in quantum computing in the coming decades.

In anticipation of such a quantum computing paradigm, cryptography is being developed and evolved by using so-called quantum-safe algorithms. They run on classical computers and are believed to withstand attacks from powerful quantum computers.

When we compare post-quantum cryptography with the currently used asymmetric algorithms, we find that post-quantum cryptography mostly have larger key and signature sizes and require more operations and memory. Still, they are very practical for everything except perhaps very constrained Internet of Things devices and radio.

Large-scale cryptography-breaking quantum computers are highly unlikely to develop during the next decade

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is currently standardizing stateless quantum-resistant signatures, public-key encryption, and key-establishment algorithms and is expected to release the first draft publications between 20222024. After this point, the new standardized algorithms will likely be added to security protocols like X.509, IKEv2, TLS and JOSE and deployed in various industries. The IETF crypto forum research group has finished standardizing two stateful hash-based signature algorithms, XMSS and LMS which are also expected to be standardized by NIST. XMSS and LMS are the only post-quantum cryptographic algorithms that could currently be considered for production systems e.g. for firmware updates.

The US government is currently using the Commercial National Security Algorithm Suite for protection of information up to top secret. They have already announced that they will begin a transition to post-quantum cryptographic algorithms following the completion of standardization in 2024.

Why should the industry be taking note of this decision? Top secret information is often protected for 50 to 75 years, so the fact that the US government is not planning to finalize the transition to post-quantum cryptography until perhaps 2030 seems to indicate that they are quite certain that quantum computers capable of breaking P-384 and RSA-3072 will not be available for many decades.

When we turn our focus to symmetric cryptography as opposed to asymmetric cryptography, we see that the threat is even more exaggerated. In fact, even a quantum computer capable of breaking RSA-2048 would pose no practical threat to AES-128 whatsoever.

Grovers algorithm applied to AES-128 requires a serial computation of roughly 265 AES evaluations that cannot be efficiently parallelized. As quantum computers are also very slow (operations per second), very expensive, and quantum states are hard to transfer from a malfunctioning quantum computer, it seems highly unlikely that even clusters of quantum computers will ever be a practical threat to symmetric algorithms. AES-128 and SHA-256 are both quantum resistant according to the evaluation criteria in the NIST PQC (post quantum cryptography) standardization project.

In addition to post-quantum cryptography running on classical computers, researchers in quantum networking are looking at quantum key distribution (QKD), which would theoretically be a provably secure way to do unauthenticated key exchange.

QKD is however not useful for any other use cases such as encryption, integrity protection, or authentication where cryptography is used today as it requires new hardware and is also very expensive compared to software-based algorithms running on classical computers.

In a well-written white paper, the UK government is discouraging use of QKD stating that it seems to be introducing new potential avenues for attack, that the hardware dependency is not cost-efficient, that QKDs limited scope makes it unsuitable for future challenges, and that post-quantum cryptography is a better alternative. QKD will likely remain a niche product until quantum networks are needed for non-security reasons.

Standardization of stateless quantum-resistant signatures, public-key encryption and key-establishment algorithms is ongoing and first draft publications are expected no earlier than 2022

The calculation recently used to show quantum supremacy was not very interesting in itself and was contrived to show quantum supremacy. The claim was also criticized by competing researchers who claim that the corresponding classical calculation could be done over a million times faster. Quantum computers able to solve any practical problems more cost-effectively than classical computers are still years away.

The quantum supremacy computer consists of 54 physical qubits (quantum bit), which after quantum error correction corresponding to only a fraction of a single logical qubit. This is very far away from quantum computers able to break any cryptographic algorithm used in practice which would require several thousand logical qubits and hundreds of billions of quantum gates. Scaling up the number of qubits will not be easy, but some researchers believe that the number of qubits will follow a quantum equivalent of Moores law called Nevens law. We will likely see undisputed claims of quantum supremacy in the coming years.

Since our earlier post in 2017 about post-quantum cryptography in mobile networks, the hype around quantum computers and the worries about their security impacts have been more nuanced, aligning with our previous analysis.

Recent reports from academia and industry now says that large-scale cryptography-breaking quantum computers are highly unlikely during the next decade. There has also been general agreement that quantum computers do not pose a large threat to symmetrical algorithms. Standardization organizations like IETF and 3GPP and various industries are now calmly awaiting the outcome of the NIST PQC standardization.

Quantum computers will likely be highly disruptive for certain industries, but probably not pose a practical threat to asymmetric cryptography for many decades and will likely never be a practical threat to symmetric cryptography. Companies that need to protect information or access for a very long time should start thinking about post-quantum cryptography. But as long as US government protects top secret information with elliptic curve cryptography and RSA, they are very likely good enough for basically any other non-military use case.

Read our colleagues earlier blog series on quantum computing, beginning with an introduction to quantum computer technology.

Read our earlier technical overview to cryptography in an all encrypted world in the Ericsson Technology Review.

Visit our future technologies page to learn how tomorrows world is evolving.

Link:
What next in the world of post-quantum cryptography? - Ericsson

DARPA to Explore Fully Homomorphic Encryption in New Program – ExecutiveBiz

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is pursuing an effort to develop hardware that allows for computing on encrypted data with continuous protection.

DARPA said Monday its Data Protection in Virtual Environments or DPRIVE program aims to accelerate computations done with fully homomorphic encryption or FHE, an approach that protects encrypted data while still allowing for processing.

FHE uses lattice cryptography to block cyber attacks via complex, nearly unsolvable mathematical barriers. However, FHE computations generate noise that would eventually corrupt the data at a certain point, and addressing this noise results in a large amount of computational overhead.

The DPRIVE program aims to reduce this overhead and accelerate FHE computations.

"Today, DARPA is continuing to invest in the exploration of FHE, focusing on a re-architecting of the hardware, software and algorithms needed to make it a practical, widely usable solution," said Tom Rondeau, a program manager at DARPA.

The agency hosted a proposer's event on Monday to further inform interested parties on the program. DARPA also launched a presolicitation for DPRIVE and will continue to accept responses through June 2.

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DARPA to Explore Fully Homomorphic Encryption in New Program - ExecutiveBiz

Gilles Brassard honoured by the BBVA Foundation for his work in quantum computing – Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

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Gilles Brassard, a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Universit de Montral, along with Charles Bennett of IBM's New York State Research Center and Peter Shor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been awarded the BBVA Foundation's Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the basic sciences category for "outstanding contributions to the areas of computing and quantum communication."

Thee three researchers will receive the award June 2 in Bilbao, Spain, and will share the 400,000 that comes with it.

Professor Brassard is the seventh Canadian to receive the prize and the first ever in the basic sciences category (physics, chemistry, mathematics).

In 1984, Brassard and Bennett devised the first quantum cryptography technique, which makes it possible to encode messages in order to exchange information with absolute confidentiality. Then, in 1993, they laid the foundations for quantum teleportation in collaboration with four other researchers. The group proved that it was possible to transport information in subatomic particles, such as photons, from one place in the galaxy to another, without physically moving them. This principle is based on the rules of quantum theory, according to which a particle can simultaneously exist in several states.

Industry is currently investing billions of dollars in quantum technologies, particularly in China and Europe, and the theoretical work of Brassard, Bennett and Shor has helped put this discipline on track.

This is the third major award that Brassard and Bennett have jointly won on the international scene. In 2018, the duo received the Wolf Prize in Physics from the President of Israel, a prize often seen as leading to a Nobel Prize in Physics. Last year in China, they were awarded the Micius Prize for their breakthroughs in quantum theory.

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Gilles Brassard honoured by the BBVA Foundation for his work in quantum computing - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source


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