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Op-Ed: When espionage pays, Chelsea Manning steps out for Vogue – SOFREP (press release) (subscription)

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Vogue Magazine recently did a feature including a photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz on Chelsea Manning, who theyre touting as a hero. Chelsea Manning Changed the Course of History. Now Shes Focusing on Herself and it is eye-opening and would be comical if it werent so serious. Hero? Hardly, shes fortunate shes not still in Leavenworth where she was serving her sentence.

For those of you who dont remember who Chelsea Manning is, back in 2009 thethen Bradley Manning, a specialist in the U.S. Army was stationed in Baghdad. He leaked thousands of documents to Wikileaks in 2010 after trying to approach both the Washington Post and the New York Times to turn over classified documents.

After being rebuffed by both the Post and Times, he began to correspond with Wikileaks on social media on both the IRC and Jabber platforms.

The entire story began in January 2010, Manning downloaded 400,000 documents in what later became the Iraq War Logs. Just three days later, he downloaded an additional 91,000 documents which were referred to as the Afghanistan War Logs. Manning then burned them to a CD which was labeled Lady Gaga which would get thru any cursory security inspection. He then downloaded the documents to his personal computer.

The next day, Manning wrote to the Washington Post offering to turn over the classified documents with a message that was later recovered.

Items of historical significance of two wars Iraq and Afghanistan Significant Activity, Sigacts, between 0001 January 2004 and 2359 31 December 2009 extracts from CSV documents from Department of Defense and CDNE database.

These items have already been sanitized of any source identifying information.

You might need to sit on this information for 90 to 180 days to best send and distribute such a large amount of data to a large audience and protect the source.

This is one of the most significant documents of our time removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare.

Have a good day.

Manning, January 9, 2010

Manning then copied the documents to an SD card in his camera which he planned on taking with him back to the United States on leave. While back in the US, he contacted a Post reporter who didnt seem interested. The Times didnt return a phone call so Manning then sought out Wikileaks. He then transmitted all of the documents to Wikileaks on February 3, via the TOR platform.

After returning to Iraq, Manning didnt know if Wikileaks had received the original 500,000 documents but sent them a diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland which was posted on their website immediately. He then posted two videos, one, an airstrike in Baghdad and the other from Afghanistan. Later over a two-week period between late March and early April 2010, Manning downloaded 250,000 diplomatic cables and uploaded them to Wikileaks Dropbox. During this time he was actively chatting with someone he believed to be Julian Assange.

In late April, Manning sent a letter to his direct line supervisor, MSG Paul Adkins stating that he was suffering from gender disorder and included a picture of himself dressed as a woman. Adkins kept the information private and didnt discuss nor share any information within the chain of command for fear that the picture would end up being disseminated in the unit.

Manning was busted from Specialist to PFC after he had an altercation with a female member of his unit and punched the other soldier, Specialist Jihrleah Showman in the face. Manning began a series of chats online with a known hacker Adrian Lamo and admitted being the person behind the leaks. Lamo thought that the leaks that Manning had admitted to were endangering lives and went to the Armys Criminal Investigation Division or CID.

Manning was arrested by CID on May 27, 2010. After return to the US, he was held at the Quantico, Marine Corps base. On Feb. 28, 2013, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 of the charges he was facing. Mannings trial began on June 3, 2013. Manning was convicted on July 30, on 17 of the 22 charges, including five counts of espionage and theft, and an amended version of four other charges; however, he was acquitted of aiding the enemy. Manning was sentenced to 21-35 years in prison at Ft. Leavenworth, KS, reduced to PVT, E-1. forfeiture of all pay and allowances and given a dishonorable discharge.

Manning made a statement to the court prior to sentencing saying,

I am sorry that my actions hurt people. Im sorry that they hurt the United States. I am sorry for the unintended consequences of my actions. When I made these decisions I believed I was going to help people, not hurt people. At the time of my decisions, I was dealing with a lot of issues.- Manning

On January 26, 2017, President Obama commuted all but four months of Mannings sentence. During his time in prison, Manning came out fully as a transgender and was now referred to she.

When Manning was released, she had no job, no money and few prospects. But she became a poster child for the far left as if her gender identity issues made her behavior not only ok but of the heroic variety. A GoFundMe page was set up for Manning.

My how times have quickly changed. Some of our sources report that shes living in a very expensive area of the New York City with professional security when she steps out.

In the Vogue piece, the magazine commented on her apparel that she was wearing that they described as:

dressed with a mixture of straightforward elegance and function: a casual black sleeveless Marc Jacobs dress with playful paisley lining, a small purse from The Row, Borderline boots by Vetements x Dr. Martens

Do a quick check online at the cost of those items. Coupled with a Tribeca apartment and a security detail and it would seem espionage against your own country does pay.

Manning isnt a hero nor worthy of any respect for anything she did. She admitted to hurting the United States and the people she served with. But hey, these are different times we live in. Because shes transgender, that makes it all perfectly fine with some folks. And youd think shes laying low these days and trying to blend into the woodwork. Most convicted felons do. But these are different times we live in.

Shes now an active social media maven, where she lectures the rest of us on how smart she is on national issues.

To quote Yakov Smirnoff What a country.

Featured image courtesy of Wikipedia

This article was originally published on SpecialOperations.com

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Op-Ed: When espionage pays, Chelsea Manning steps out for Vogue - SOFREP (press release) (subscription)

Chelsea Manning Will Be In ‘Vogue’s’ September Issue – A Plus

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"That's the part of my life I replay the most: whether or not, living in Maryland and seeing a therapist [at age 19], I could have finally been able to say, 'This is who I am; this is what I want to do.' It was the first time in my life when I really considered transitioning. But I got scared. I really regret the fact that I didn't know or realize I already had the love I needed, especially from my aunt and sister just to seek support."

She shared that she was "a bit surprised by the outpouring of love and support" she got after she did reveal that she's a transgender woman. "If there was backlash, too (and there was), she doesn't seem to have registered it a tellingly upbeat response from a woman who now sprinkles hertweetswith hearts and rainbows," Vogue's contributing editor, Nathan Heller, wrote in the piece.

While Manning doesn't know what her future career looks like, she does have a few guiding principles she hopes to live by. "I have these values that I can connect with: responsibility, compassion. Those are really foundational for me. Do and say and be who you are because, no matter what happens, you are loved unconditionally," she said.

"It is OK to be who I am."

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Chelsea Manning Will Be In 'Vogue's' September Issue - A Plus

Should Vladimir Putin be afraid of German Greens? – American Enterprise Institute

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In a striking about-face, Germanys Greens are emerging as the most visible hawks in discussions over the countrys foreign policy, especially regarding Russia. Last month, the party co-chair, Cem zdemir, called for a tightening of sanctions against Russia. Were seeing an escalation in Eastern Ukraine, he explained.

Of Turkish descent himself, he also made a case for more pressure on the regime in Turkey, particularly using economic tools. German investors, he says, need to understand that Turkey is no place for secure investment, because there is no rule of law there.

Russian President Vladimir Putin looks on during a news conference at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 8, 2017. Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS

For many years, the Greens tune was different. Throughout the 2000s, the partys leader and foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, was a leading European critic of US foreign policy. In 2014, the Greens-EFA group in the European Parliament of which the German Greens are a member tried to nominate Edward Snowden for Nobel Peace Prize. In the same year, the Greens dismissed as irresponsible the calls for a stronger NATO presence on Europes Eastern flank.

To some extent, the Greens long nurtured an internationalist outlook and a distrust of Russia. During Mr. Fischers tenure as foreign minister in the cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schrder, Germany took part in NATOs intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and later joined the coalition fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. After leaving the government, Mr. Fischer was also critical of his former boss entanglements with Russia. Just last week, Mr. Schrder, who is also working for the Gazprom-led consortium building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to German, was nominated by the Russian government to join the board of directors of Rosneft.

Whereas few expect Chancellor Angela Merkel to be unseated in the election held on September 24, her coalition partners will shape Germanys and by extension, the EUs posture in its Eastern neighborhood.

Ms. Merkel is already under pressure from CDUs sister party in Bavaria, CSU, to bring the sanctions against Russia to an end. That pressure will only increase if the grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) continues after the election. Quite apart from Mr. Schrders Russian misadvetures, the SPDs former leader and Germanys Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has been long calling for an end to the EUs sanctions. And, on top of that, the partys current leader, the populist Martin Schulz, even rejects NATOs 2% spending target, calling it the wrong goal.

The combination of navet, sanctimony, and crude material interests although in different proportions is not limited to SPD. Unsurprisingly, populists of different stripes, including The Left and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), are the most reliable allies of the Kremlin. Back in 2015, representatives of The Left even delivered humanitarian assistance to the self-styled authorities of the Donetsk Peoples Republic. Earlier this year, at the Russian Dumas invitation, the AfDs leader Frauke Petry met in Moscow with a range of high-profile parliamentarians.

On the list of Ms. Merkels prospective coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP) flaunt solid classical liberal credentials and a compelling, pro-market agenda at home. Yet, their leader Christian Lindner called recently for a new approach to German-Russian relations, which would recognize the annexation of Crimea as a permanent provisional arrangement. Notwithstanding a small number of critical voices in the party most prominently Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, who currently serves as a Vice-president of European Parliament appeasement of Russia has been a part of FDPs toolbox since Russias attack against Ukraine in 2014.

A coalition between Ms. Merkels Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Greens thus appears to be the most likely, if not the only, path toward keeping Russia at bay in the critical run-up to the Russian presidential election in March 2018. As September 24 approaches, expect the eyes of the Kremlins trolls, hackers, and useful idiots to be set primarily on them as opposed to the long list of Putin Verstehers present in German politics.

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Should Vladimir Putin be afraid of German Greens? - American Enterprise Institute

Why Govt officials shouldn’t use Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail – The Herald

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hubpages.com

On the October 14, 2013 there was a report that, on a single day, the National Security Agency (NSA)s Special Source Operations branch collected 444 743 email address books from Yahoo, 105 068 from Hotmail, 82 857 from Facebook, 33 697 from Gmail and 22 881 from other unspecified providers, The Washington Post said, according to an internal NSA presentation.

Furthermore, according to a report published in July 2017, Zimbabwe is number one Most Hackable Country in the World. Four years on (2017), following the Washington Post report, what concerns us in the Zimbabwe Information Communication Technologies (ZICT) sector is the fact that each and every Government employee who has an email address, including ministers, deputy ministers, Members of Parliament, permanent secretaries, etc has either a Gmail, Yahoo or a Hotmail, and uses it as a means of Government communication.

ZICT is one organisation that supports the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media to reach out to the masses, but when it comes to official Government communication, officials should be stopped from using Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or any other FREE email provider and use emails that are provided by our Government Internet Service Provider (GISP) (lets work on making it efficient).

The ZICT move comes amid concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking incidents that are constantly recorded worldwide. With the other being the well-publicised WikiLeaks and revelations of the US NSA spying, Zimbabwe should be drawing up an Email Policy to help secure Government communications. The use of Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and the like is highly risky since these free email providers have their servers in the US and the NSA has been known to tap into their database systems. It is very clear that 100 percent, yes 100 percent of Zimbabwe Government officials use free email providers for official communication as all Government officials have a either a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail address as indicated on their official Government business cards.

I have a Gov.zw email, but the quality of our official Government email provided by Government Internet Service Provider (GISP) is not that great, as a Government official, you struggle to send or receive emails, hence the need to have a Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc, a Government official added on condition of anonymity.

The Government of Zimbabwe has to come up with an Email Policy in the wake of spying allegations of the NSA revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks exposed by Julian Assange, to protect our Government communication channels. It is in the public domain that NSAs tentacles not only crept into the Zimbabwean embassy in Washington and its UN office in New York, but has also accessed email and chat messenger contact lists of hundreds of millions of ordinary citizens worldwide, according to media reports.

The Email Policy must be policy that states that all Government services, officials and ministers must rely on the GISP as the provider of a secure email service and that they cannot even forward email from their official Government email to their personal Gmail email.

It is a ZICT proposal that the Government of Zimbabwe provides a platform where ICT experts meet to find a lasting solution to the use of FREE email providers.

The move must be brought as a matter of urgency amid concerns about rising cybercrime and hacking incidents.

The Email Policy must seek to protect large amounts of critical Government data and aim to make it mandatory for Government offices to communicate only on GISP, not on commercial email services Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.

With TelOne having a Data Centre, these emails may be integrating in the TelOne cloud so that official data can be saved on a cloud platform and can then be easily shared with the concerned Government ministries, officials and departments.

What should give the Government of Zimbabwe goose bumps is the fact that NSA has a data-mining tool, called Boundless Informant, which gives details and even maps by country of the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks in any particular country. Considering that Zimbabwe is a sanctioned country and the passing of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, which is still in effect, there is no doubt that the Boundless Informant is definitely focusing on Zimbabwe.

As Zimbabwes elections are just round the corner, it will be ill-advised for the Government of Zimbabwe to ignore this information, considering that there is speculation that the Russians hacked the USA electoral system. How about us Zimbabwe?

Act now.

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Why Govt officials shouldn't use Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail - The Herald

End-to-end encryption isn’t enough security for ‘real people’ – Albany Times Union

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(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Megan Squire, Elon University

(THE CONVERSATION) Government officials continue to seek technology companies help fighting terrorism and crime. But the most commonly proposed solution would severely limit regular peoples ability to communicate securely online. And it ignores the fact that governments have other ways to keep an electronic eye on targets of investigations.

In June, government intelligence officials from the Five Eyes Alliance nations held a meeting in Ottawa, Canada, to talk about how to convince tech companies to thwart the encryption of terrorist messaging. In July, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called on technology companies to voluntarily ban all systems that totally encrypt messages in transit from sender to recipient, an approach known as end-to-end encryption. British Home Secretary Amber Rudd made global headlines with her July 31 newspaper opinion piece arguing that real people dont need end-to-end encryption.

These claims completely ignore the one billion real people who already use secure messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. And it leaves no room for people who may decide they want that security in the future. Yet some technology companies look like they might be considering removing end-to-end encryption and others installed backdoors for government access years ago. Its been two decades since the Clipper chip was in the news, but now a revival of the government-business-consumer crypto-wars of the 1990s threatens.

One thing is very clear to computer scientists like me: We real people should work on improving security where we are most vulnerable on our own devices.

For the moment at least, we do have good, easy-to-use solutions for secure communication between computers, including end-to-end encryption of our messages. End-to-end encryption means that a message is encrypted by the sender, and decrypted by the recipient, and no third party is able to decrypt the message.

End-to-end is important, but security experts have warned for years that the most vulnerable place for your data is not during transit from place to place, but rather when its stored or displayed at one end or the other on a screen, on a disk, in memory or on some device in the cloud.

As the WikiLeaks release of CIA hacking tools highlighted, if someone can gain control of a device, they can read the messages without needing to decrypt them. And compromising endpoints both smartphones and personal computers is getting easier all the time.

Why are we most vulnerable at the endpoint? Because we dont like to be inconvenienced, and because adding more protection makes our devices harder to use, the same way putting multiple locks on a door makes it harder to get in, for both the homeowner and the burglar. Inventing new ways to protect our digital endpoints without reducing their usefulness is very challenging, but some new technologies just over the horizon might help.

Suppose a criminal organization or bad government, EvilRegime, wants to spy on you and everyone you communicate with. To protect yourself, youve installed an end-to-end encryption tool, such as Signal, for messaging. This makes eavesdropping even with a courts permission that much more difficult for EvilRegime.

But what if EvilRegime tricks you into installing spyware on your device? For example, they could swap out a legitimate upgrade of your favorite game, ClashBirds, with a compromised version. Or, EvilRegime could use a malware network investigative technique as a backdoor into your machine. With control of your endpoint, EvilRegime can read your messages as you type them, even before they are encrypted.

To guard against either type of EvilRegimes trickery, we need to improve our endpoint security game in a few key ways, making sure that:

- EvilRegime isnt masquerading as the company that makes ClashBirds when we install our software.

- No one has tampered with our ClashBirds app before or after installation.

- The app doesnt have any backdoors or security holes that could be exploited by EvilRegime after we install it.

In addition, it would be ideal if users could control their apps security themselves, rather than having to rely on app store security provided by yet another vulnerable corporation.

Computer security experts are excited about the idea that blockchain technology might be able to help us secure our own endpoints. Blockchain, the technology that underpins Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, creates a verifiable, unchangeable public record of information.

What this means for endpoint security is that computer scientists might be able to create blockchain-based tools to help us verify the origin of our apps. We could also use blockchains to confirm our data havent been tampered with, and to ensure our privacy. And as long as the source code for these programs is also free for us to inspect as Signal is today the security community will be able to verify that there are no secret backdoors.

As with any new technology, there is an enormous amount of hype and misinformation around blockchain and what it can do. It will take time to sift through all these ideas and develop secure tools that are easy to use. In the meantime, we all need to continue to use end-to-end encryption apps whenever possible. We should also stay vigilant about password hygiene and about what apps we install on our machines. Finally, we must demand that real people always have access to the best security mechanisms available, so we can decide for ourselves how and when to resist surveillance.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article here: http://theconversation.com/end-to-end-encryption-isnt-enough-security-for-real-people-82054.

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End-to-end encryption isn't enough security for 'real people' - Albany Times Union

Ex-MI5 Boss Evans: Don’t Undermine Encryption – Infosecurity Magazine

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A former head of MI5 has argued against undermining end-to-end encryption in messaging apps like WhatsApp, claiming it will damage broader cybersecurity efforts.

Jonathan Evans, who left the secret service in 2013 and is now a crossbencher in the House of Lords, made the comments in an interview with BBC Radio 4s Today program on Friday.

Despite recognizing that end-to-end encryption has helped terrorists hide their communications from the security services, he distanced himself from outspoken critics of the technology, such as home secretary Amber Rudd.

Im not personally one of those who thinks we should weaken encryption because I think there is a parallel issue, which is cybersecurity more broadly, Evans argued.

While understandably there is a very acute concern about counter-terrorism, it is not the only threat that we face. The way in which cyber-space is being used by criminals and by governments is a potential threat to the UKs interests more widely.

He argued that undermining encryption would actually make countless consumers and businesses less secure, and the countrys economy as a whole worse off.

Its very important that we should be seen and be a country in which people can operate securely. Thats important for our commercial interests as well as our security interests, so encryption in that context is very positive, said Evans.

As our vehicles, air transport, our critical infrastructure is resting critically on the internet, we need to be really confident that we have secured that because our economic and daily lives are going to be dependent on the security we can put in to protect us from cyber-attack.

Evans also had something to say about allegations of Russian interference in elections, claiming that he would be surprised if thered been no attempts to sway UK votes in the past.

The former MI5 boss is not the first expert to have argued against the government forcing providers to undermine encryption so that the security services can access suspected terrorists comms.

Former GCHQ boss Robert Hannigan claimed in July that so-called backdoors in such services are a threat to everybody and that its not a good idea to weaken security for everybody in order to tackle a minority.

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Ex-MI5 Boss Evans: Don't Undermine Encryption - Infosecurity Magazine

WatchGuard’s New Fireboxes Chew Through Encrypted Traffic 94 Percent Faster Than Competitors – Markets Insider

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SEATTLE, Aug. 15, 2017/PRNewswire/ --WatchGuard Technologies, a leader in advanced network security solutions, today announced hardware upgrades to its Firebox M Series to handle the rapid proliferation of encrypted web traffic and offer more flexibility with added copper and fiber ports. With the new M470, M570 and M670 appliances, users can add additional network modules to increase the number of copper or fiber ports available to support the growing use of 10G fiber in midsize enterprise data centers. The new Firebox M Series appliances also enable users to inspect encrypted traffic with industry-leading performance with all security services enabled. According to Miercom, an independent testing lab, the updated Firebox M370 performs full HTTPS inspection 94 percent faster than competing solutions.

Network defenses that don't adequately process and inspect encrypted traffic leave employees, customers and partners vulnerable to cyber attacks. According to a 2016 Ponemon study, 41 percent of attacks in 2016 used encryption to either disguise their entry into the network or hide their connection to a Command and Control server. NSS Labs, Inc. forecasts that as adoption rates continue to climb, 75 percent of web traffic will be encrypted by 2019. A firewall that lacks the processing power necessary to inspect high volumes of encrypted traffic will either need to turn off some security services or compromise throughput in order to manage the burden.

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About WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.WatchGuard Technologies, Inc. is a global leader in network security, providing best-in-class Unified Threat Management, Next Generation Firewall, secure Wi-Fi, and network intelligence products and services to more than 80,000 customers worldwide. The company's mission is to make enterprise-grade security accessible to companies of all types and sizes through simplicity, making WatchGuard an ideal solution for Distributed Enterprises and SMBs. WatchGuard is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. To learn more, visitWatchGuard.com.

For additional information, promotions and updates, follow WatchGuard on Twitter,@WatchGuardonFacebook, or on theLinkedIn Companypage. Also, visit our InfoSec blog, Secplicity, for real-time information about the latest threats and how to cope with them at http://www.secplicity.org.

NSS Labs, Inc. does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. NSS Labs expressly disclaims any warranties with respect to any research cited herein, including those of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.

Media Contacts:

Chris WarfieldWatchGuard Technologies206.876.8380 rel="nofollow">chris.warfield@watchguard.com

Anthony CogswellVoxus PR253.444.5980 rel="nofollow">acogswell@voxuspr.com

View original content with multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/watchguards-new-fireboxes-chew-through-encrypted-traffic-94-percent-faster-than-competitors-300504295.html

SOURCE WatchGuard Technologies, Inc.

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WatchGuard's New Fireboxes Chew Through Encrypted Traffic 94 Percent Faster Than Competitors - Markets Insider

Open source software gets scientific data to shine at Diamond Light Source – Diginomica

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SUMMARY:

The UKs national synchrotron uses some pretty esoteric tools to get work done, but there may be room for cloud in future.

In a paper published in the EBioMedicine scientific journal this month, a group of scientists have revealed how leukaemia cells prevent themselves from being attacked by the human immune system. This discovery, they believe, could be an important step in the fight to develop new types of drugs for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), a kind of blood cancer that can often be fatal because of the shortcomings of current treatment strategies.

That the scientists were able to uncover exactly how AML cells evade attack by the immune cells that patrol our bodies owes much to work they conducted with the help of Diamond Light Source, the UKs national synchrotron.

Government-funded through the UKs Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) and also biomedical research charity the Wellcome Trust, the synchrotron at Diamond Light Source works as a giant microscope, harnessing the power of electrons to produce bright light that scientists can use to study anything from fossils and jet engine components to vaccines, viruses and historical works of art.

Access to the synchrotron is free at the point of access to researchers from both academia and industry, through a competitive application process. All results, meanwhile, must be placed in the public domain.

Its hard to imagine equipment more complex and specialized than the synchrotron, which is 10,000 times more powerful than a traditional microscope so it stands to reason that the technology infrastructure that enables scientists to conduct their experiments and make sense of results is highly complex and specialized, too.

The vast majority of it is open source, explains Andrew Richards, head of scientific computing at Diamond Light Source, which is based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. In some cases, it comes in the form of enterprise distributions of open source technology, most notably RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL):

We go down that route because what we need is support. This is mission-critical infrastructure that our whole organization depends on so we need the confidence that we can get support when we need it.But some of what we do, were using open source software direct from the community because our work is so specialized that there arent really any commercial alternatives. The very bespoke nature of these software tools has developed around the needs and demands of the scientific user community.

A good example of this is EPICS (Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System), says Mark Basham, senior software scientist at Diamond. This is the result of an international open-source collaboration, primarily focused on automating the operations and controlling the movements of heavyweight scientific equipment such as telescopes and various types of particle accelerator, including synchrotrons. Diamond is one of the larger EPICS installations in the world and an active contributor to the software.

But since your average paleontologist, for example, doesnt want to deal with the command lines of a control system like EPICS, Diamonds data acquisition group has created an additional layer of software that sits between the end-user and the controls. This layer enables that end-user to sit down in front of screen, press a few buttons to have the system conduct an experiment on their behalf and show them the results. Here, Diamond uses OpenGDA, an open source framework for creating customized data acquisition software for science facilities. Its based on the Generic Data Acquisition (GDA) software developed at Diamond Light Source itself.

Finally, end users also need to be able to process and and visualize their data, and here, Diamond provides them with Dawn, an open source data analysis workbench. This allows them to continue to analyse their findings on their own hardware, long after theyve left Diamonds facility, where time and resources allotted to end-users are at a premium.

While much of this may seem pretty esoteric to the average corporate IT user, Andrew Richards still seems plenty of scope for using bog-standard cloud infrastructure for storage and processing in future at Diamond.

Right now, the organization is storing around 7 petabytes of data in a tape-based archive provided to it by its funder, the STFC but thats growing at 2 petabytes per year and is expected to be growing at 3 petabytes per year within a year or two. While this has proved to be the most cost-effective approach to date, Diamond is open to other approaches, Richards says:

Cloud has been considered and is being considered right now, as it happens. At the moment, when you look at the cost of doing some of this storage in the cloud, it can actually be pretty expensive. Providers make it look quite cost-effective on a per-terabyte basis, but we also need to consider the costs involved in getting data back out of the cloud when its needed. Those network egress charges can quickly stack up, but having said that, I feel like cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft are starting to recognize the kinds of volumes that an organization like ours wants to store and are working to make cloud more viable for us. Its certainly something Im interested in exploring further.

A perhaps more pressing concern for Diamond is its compute needs. Here, cloud processing could be a real boon as a supplement to its own high-performance computing (HPC) environment, Richards says:

That would help when we have peak loads, for example, that perhaps we cant address with our own in-house systems. Or where we have commercial customers who dont really know upfront how much compute resource theyll need to solve their particular problem. This currently makes it quite challenging for us to know just how much on-premise infrastructure we should have and then, as a result, the cloud starts to look much more attractive for us, insofar as we could push some data, push some work, do some calculations in the cloud and then scale down our use of these resources when we dont need them. These more spikey workloads are where the cloud is looking more interesting right now.

Already this year, researchers have used Diamonds synchrotron to explore eco-friendly fuel cells, to research new preservation techniques for great artworks, and to investigate the structure and strength of human bones, as well as to make that groundbreaking leukaemia discovery. Its all important work, so theres good reason to hope that cloud providers will step up to the plate to help these efforts expand and diversify.

Image credit - Diamond Light Source

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Open source software gets scientific data to shine at Diamond Light Source - Diginomica

Startup funding: Open source software Docker raises fund to fuel its … – Blasting News

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#Docker Inc., the company behind the popular #Open Source software and container platform Docker, has received another fresh capital this week. The San Francisco-based company has raised $75 million in its latest funding round, valuing the #Startup at around $1.3 billion.

According to Silicon Angle, the latest investment will help fuel the companys newest push in the computing market. The company plans to use the fresh capital to beef up its sales and marketing muscles.

The funding news follows a massive management shuffle, which reportedly involved former CEO of Concur Technologies Steve Singh and Dockers co-founder Solomon Hykes.

In the new management, Singh has taken the top post at Docker, replacing Dockers co-founder Ben Golub. Dockers co-founder Solomon Hykes has replaced Marc Verstane, who has stepped down from his role as Executive Vice President for Products. Additionally, the company also plans to appoint experts in operations and enterprise sales in the coming months.

For starter, Docker is an open source platform for distributed applications that allows software developers and system administrators to build and run distributed applications. With support from Docker Inc., companies can now shrink the development process from months to minutes, seamless move workloads between data centers and the cloud computing space.

The primary goal is to create software that can be moved and stored in the cloud and run anywhere regardless of the hardware and operating system (OS).

The open source container platform has been a huge success. The platform has been downloaded more than 12 billion times and used by big name companies, which include ADP, GE, PayPal, Intuit, Goldman Sachs, and Frances Societe Generale.

Founded in 2010 and based in San Francisco, California, Docker Inc. is the technology company behind the popular open source software container platform and the chief sponsor of the entire Docker ecosystem. The company was first started by Solomon Hykes in France as an internal project within the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company dotCloud. The companys technology represents an evolution of dotClouds proprietary technology, which was built on Cloudlets open source project.

In September 2013, dotCloud announced it first technology partnership, with open source solutions provider Red Hat.Then, in October 2013, dotCloud was officially renamed to Docker Inc. The next month, the company announced another big partnership with Microsoft.

And in November 2014, Docker announced a new service for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

The San Francisco-based startup has been growing fast. By 2015, the companys market value was estimated at over $1 billion, making it what the tech industry called a unicorn company.

Dockers popularity has gained lots of attention and buzz, especially in the venture capital world. The companys investors include some of the tech worlds most notable venture capital firms, which include AME Cloud Ventures, Ashvin Patel, Benchmark, Brainchild Holdings, Chris Sacca, Coatue Management, Eric Urhane, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Ignition Partners, Insight Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northern Trust, Sequoia Capital, Kenny Van Zant, and Yahoos founder Jerry Yang.

Overall, the company has raised a total of $180.92 million in venture capital fund in its eight funding rounds. In April 2015, it received its biggest fundraising, a whopping $95 million, in its Series D funding round led by Insight Venture Partners.

In addition, Docker has also made several acquisitions to beef up its technology portfolio. These include cloud computing firm Orchard (2014), software testing platform Koality (2014), open source software SocketPlane (2015), container management Kitematic (2015), container technology firm Tutum (2015), cloud infrastructure firm Unikernel Systems (2016), container orchestration Conductant (2016), and storage platform Infinit (2016).

Currently, Docker competes against the likes of Mesosphere Inc. and the Google-led Kubernetes. The company hasnt provided much information about its latest funding round and market valuation.

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Startup funding: Open source software Docker raises fund to fuel its ... - Blasting News

US Foreign Sanctions Bill Mandates That Governments Monitor Cryptocurrency – Bitcoin News (press release)

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President Trump recently signed a foreign sanctions bill into law that included provisions mandating that governments monitor cryptocurrency transactions. The bill was passed by the U.S congress last month and is directed at Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Also Read:Homeland Security Injects $2.25 Million Into Distributed Ledger and Blockchain Surveillance Startups

President Trump has signed a controversial foreign sanctions bill into law that mandates the Iranian, Russian, and North Korean governments must monitor cryptocurrency circulations as a measure to combat illicit finance trends.

The bill requires that governments develop a national security strategy to combat the financing of terrorism and related forms of illicit finance. Governments will be required to monitor data regarding trends in illicit finance, including evolving forms of value transfer such as so-called cryptocurrencies.

Although the new legislation indicates the U.S governments desire to monitor cryptocurrencies, at this time making no indication that a more aggressive cryptocurrency crackdown may be imminent.

Yaya Fanusie, a former CIA counter-terrorism analyst for the CIA, has presented a balanced account of the threat posed to anti-terror authorities by bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies. The national security concern is not that criminals will use this type of technology they use all technologies, Mr. Fanusie said. The policy question is: How do you deal with something that governments cant control?

Fanusie previously identified the first verifiable instance of bitcoin being used a vehicle for fundraising by a terrorist organization, and continues to conduct analysis for the Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. In an interview with the Washington Times, Fanusie recommended that U.S government work closely with cryptocurrencies in order to ensure that they are not used for illicit financing. Bitcoin is like a rebellious teenager, it wants to do its own thing, he said. So what do you do? Do you ban it? No, you want to have a good relationship with it and influence how it develops.

According to the bill, an initial draft strategy is expected to come before Congress within the next year, and will see input made by US financial regulators, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department.

Do you think that sanctioned governments will adhered to the U.Ss provision relating to the of monitoring cryptocurrency transactions? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

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US Foreign Sanctions Bill Mandates That Governments Monitor Cryptocurrency - Bitcoin News (press release)


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