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OSU Open Source Lab leader looks to further FOSS community outreach – TechTarget

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The Open Source Lab at Oregon State University is a bustling open source community, from the FOSS projects it hosts, including the Linux Master Kernel and Apache Web server, to the open source awareness it promotes through educational programs, such as a data center run by OSU computer science students.

Earlier this month, the Open Source Lab (OSL) announced its newest team member, Leslie Hawthorn, a former program manager at Google, who joins the OSL as Open Source Outreach Manager. In this role, she will develop educational programs with the aim of increasing awareness and adoption of open source development both in the classroom and the FOSS community. I recently spoke with Leslie about her OSU and FOSS community goals, and on teaching the future leaders of FOSS.

What led you from Google to Oregon State University and its Open Source Lab? How will your work at Google supplement your new role in increasing open source awareness and adoption in the classroom? I had a wonderful run at Google -- more than six years -- and decided it was time for a change of scene, both career-wise and geographically. I had worked extensively with the team at OSU's Open Source Lab during my time at Google and had consistently been impressed with their support of the open source community and their leadership in bringing open source into computer science education. My new role allows me to support both aspects of their mission, and I am very excited to join them.

I made many connections in the open source world during my time at Google. I also became an active member in several communities working to lower barriers to the teaching of open source in undergraduate education, including the Teaching Open Source community and the Humanitarian FOSS Project. The network I built during my time at Google will be invaluable in continuing to match eager students with the right open source projects for their mutual benefit.

What will you do to ensure your programs for undergrads and grads prepare the next generation for a career in open source development? A lot of CIOs are currently having trouble finding the right candidates with Linux skills to run open source environments. We're still thinking through what our programs will be, but as to how to make them relevant to the needs of industry -- that will involve the usual: market research, interviews with industry players, etc. I think the most significant piece will be a hands-on development requirement -- for example, a requirement that students participate actively in an open source project. Students who graduate from university with a useful body of work that they can show to prospective employers will be much more attractive candidates.

As the open source outreach manager at OSU, what will you do outside of the classroom to ensure that the OSU Open Source Lab stays connected to the FOSS community as a whole? The Lab does a tremendous job supporting the community -- we're hosting more than 100 key open source projects, including Apache, Debian and Drupal. I'd like to see us do more to communicate with the community and the business world about our efforts -- what we do, how we do it and how we need support in these efforts. Everyone here is so busy doing wonderful things that they don't take much time to talk about it, and we'll be improving that as time goes on. What are your short- or long-term goals in your new position as open source outreach manager? Short-term, I am helping our team promote the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), our annual nonprofit event to connect government IT Management and Government 2.0 advocates with one another to share best practices and tips for successful, transparent governance. Long-term, I am looking forward to helping Oregon State continue its outstanding track record of supporting the open source community and teaching students about open source software.

Open source is certainly growing, but Windows still predominantly runs the show. How much of a curriculum, then, should be dedicated to FOSS when this is still the case? Do you think it will be a challenge for training programs such as OSUs Open Source Lab to become the norm in colleges around the country? I think that answer largely depends on what careers a college is preparing its students for. I think a rigorous education in computer science covers both Windows and open source software, but if students want to specialize in a given area, then they may require more in-depth knowledge of open source than other areas. The most important part is giving students the opportunity to increase the breadth of their knowledge and to explore different ways to tinker with what they're creating. That creative energy is what fuels innovation, and I think open source software caters to that creativity in significant ways.

Whats the biggest challenge you face in the FOSS community? I think the biggest challenge all of us in the FOSS community face is too many good things to do, not enough time to do all of them. Many developers are paid to work on various FOSS projects as part of their day job. Those same developers spend many hours off-the-clock working on those projects that interest them, and there still tends to be much to do. Recruiting new members to a project, be it coders, documentation experts or user-experience gurus, can be difficult, which makes sharing the load, and training one's future replacements, a less achievable goal.

What is the next big FOSS movement or growth area you see for 2011 and beyond? Health IT and FOSS are a big story right now and I think that's only going to become more significant in the next year and beyond. Given how many different systems must interoperate securely, open source and open standards just make sense in this arena. I think the CONNECT project is a great example of this principle in action.

I also see a lot of energy around humanitarian FOSS, in areas like disaster management (Sahana & Usahidi), healthcare for the developing world (OpenMRS), microlending (Mifos) and beyond. People are much happier when they feel their work has a deeper meaning, and working on humanitarian-focused projects is a real win-win: real-world technical problems to be solved while simultaneously improving others' lives. Groups like CrisisCommons and Random Hacks of Kindness are spreading this meme worldwide with great results.

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OSU Open Source Lab leader looks to further FOSS community outreach - TechTarget

AMD Plays Catch-Up in Deep Learning with New GPUs and Open Source Strategy – TOP500 News

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AMD is looking to penetrate the deep learning market with a new line of Radeon GPU cards optimized for processing neural networks, along with a suite of open source software meant to offer an alternative to NVIDIAs more proprietary CUDA ecosystem.

The company used the opportunity of the ISC17 conference to lay out its deep learning strategy and fill in a few more details on both the hardware and software side. In a presentation titled Deep Learning: The Killer App for GPUs, AMDs Mayank Daga admitted that the company hasfallen behind in this area, but claimed its new Radeon Instinct line it will roll out later this year is on par with the best the competition has to offer.

The initial Radeon Instinct GPUs the MI25, MI8, and MI6 were first announced back in December 2016 and reviewed here by TOP500 News. All of these accelerators provide high levels of 16-bit and 32-bit performance the most common data types for deep learning codes. Apparently, there is some 64-bit capability buried in them as well, but not enough to be useful for more traditional HPC applications. Integrated high bandwidth memory (HBM2) is included in the MI25 and MI8 packages. The three GPUs spec out as follows:

While all of these GPUs are focused on the same application set, they cut across multiple architectures. The MI25 is built on the new Vega architecture, while the MI8 and MI6 are based on the older Fuji and Polaris platforms, respectively.

The top-of-the-line MI25 is built for large-scale training and inferencing applications, while the MI8 and MI6 devices are geared mostly for inferencing. AMD says they are also suitable for HPC workloads, but the lower precision limits the application set principally to some seismic and genomics codes. According to an unnamed source manning the AMD booth at ISC, they are planning to deliver 64-bit-capable Radeon GPUs in the next go-around, presumably to serve a broader array of HPC applications.

For comparisons sake, NVIDIAs P100 delivers 21.2 teraflops of FP16 and 10.6 teraflops of FP32. So from a raw flops perspective, the new MI25 compares rather favorably. However, once NVIDIA starts shipping the Volta-class V100 GPU later this year, its 120 teraflops delivered by the new Tensor Cores will blow that comparison out of the water.

A major difference is that AMD is apparently building specialized accelerators for deep learning inference and training, as well as HPC applications, while NVIDIA has abandoned this approach with the Volta generation. The V100 is an all-in-one device that can be used across these three application buckets. It remains to be seen which approach will be preferred by users.

The bigger difference is on the software side for GPU computing. AMD says it plans to keep everything in its deep learning/HPC stack as open source. That starts with the Radeon Open Compute platform, aka ROCm. It includes things such as GPU drivers, a C/C++ compilers for heterogeneous computing, and the HIP CUDA conversion tool. OpenCl and Python are also supported.

New to ROCm is MIOpen, a GPU-accelerated library that encompasses a broad array of deep learning functions. AMD plans to add support for Caffe, TensorFlow and Torch in the near future. Although everything here is open source, the breadth of support and functionality is a fraction of what is currently available to CUDA users. As a consequence, the chipmakerhas its work cut out for itto capture deep learning customers.

AMD plans to ship the new Radeon Instinct cardsin Q3 of this year.

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AMD Plays Catch-Up in Deep Learning with New GPUs and Open Source Strategy - TOP500 News

Australia announces plan to ban working cryptography at home and … – Boing Boing

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The Australian Attorney General and a key Australian minister have published a memo detailing the demand they plan on presenting to the next Five Eyes surveillance alliance meeting, which will be held next week in Ottawa.

The Australian officials will demand that their surveillance partners join with them in a plan to force "service providers to ensure reasonable assistance is provided to law enforcement and security agencies" when spies and police want to read messages that have been encrypted.

The encryption technologies under description are widely implemented in products and services that are often run by volunteer communities, or by companies who operate entirely outside 5 Eyes borders, but whose products can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world.

Working encryption is how we ensure that malicious parties don't hack our voting machines, pacemakers, home cameras, telephones, banking systems, power grids, and other key systems. There is no way to make working cryptography that can defend these applications against "bad guys" but fail catastrophically the moment a police officer or spy needs to defeat them.

The demand to ban working encryption dates back to the Clinton administration and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's groundbreaking victory in Bernstein, which ended the US ban on civilian access to working cryptography. The delusion that authorities can ban working crypto and still secure their national infrastructure persists, and is presently being mooted in Germany, and formed a key plank in Theresa May's party platform in the disastrous UK election.

As a reminder, here's what countries would lose, and what steps they would have to take, to ensure that police and spies could decrypt any communications they wanted to target:

Its impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again or on the wire, when youre sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the good guys are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a master key for the authorities use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will introduce unquantifiable security risks. Its hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight making them airtight except when the authorities dont want them to be is impossible.

What these leaders thinks they're saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. These officials don't understand technology very well, so they doesn't actually know what they're asking for.

For this proposal to work, they will need to stop Britons, Canadians, Americans, Kiwis and Australians from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

Australia is not alone here. The regime they proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Australian governments have already shown that she believes she can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the 5 Eyes nations are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other states are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or Mexico could come to the 5 Eyes countries with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what the Australian AG is proposing:

* All 5 Eyes citizens' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of a 5 Eyes government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked in the 5 Eyes

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the 5 Eyes must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of 5 Eyes countries, and within those countries, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting a 5 Eyes country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

The Australian officials will say that she doesn't want to do any of this. They'll say that they can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the every 5 Eyes nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

Thats a technical argument, and its a good one, but you dont have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people wholl want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administrations master keys for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though aggressive investigation work has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it completely destroyed in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). Ive yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks dont just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves cant impersonate your fob to your cars keyless ignition system; its the reason you can bank online; and its the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartzs words: Its not OK not to understand the internet anymore. That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in golden keys that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

Tackling Encryption and Border Security key Priorities at Five-Eyes Meeting in Ottawah [Office of the Australian Attorney General]

Australia advocates weakening strong crypto at upcoming Five Eyes meeting [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

(via /.)

(Image: Facepalm, Brandon Grasley, CC-BY)

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Australia announces plan to ban working cryptography at home and ... - Boing Boing

Could TenX Make Cryptocurrency More Usable In the Real World? – Investopedia

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TenX has big plans to change the world of cryptocurrencies. How will they do it? One word: liquidity. An ongoing issue plaguing the digital currency landscape is the question of how to make use of virtual money in real-world spending applications. Generally speaking, only the top few cryptocurrencies see a large enough trading volume and liquidity in order to be viable in this way and on a large scale. TenX, a startup which recently earned $34 million in seven minutes with their initial coin offering, or ICO, believes that they have a solution.

The startup, a 2017 graduate of Paypal's incubator program and based in Singapore, has prepared a debit card to facilitate the spending of blockchain assets in the real world. A report by Bitcoinist outlines some of the technology behind the card. On the front end, the card will use a payment system, and on the back, it will use COMIT. This protocol allows disparate blockchains, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, to communicate and interact with one another without having to generate a common token between them. Theoretically, this will speed up transaction times and allow for real-world applications that would not have previously been possible.

Beyond the debit card, TenX has also reportedly developed an app for iOS and Android which will assist in the process of introducing the TenX currency, called PAY, into the real world. Inc.com reports that the app will act as both a wallet and as a decentralized, fee-free exchange. Beyond that, the app will also include a debit/credit card functionality as well. It seems that TenX may be preparing both digital credit cards as well as tangible plastic cards for use. In either case, the user would theoretically be able to make use of the card at any brick and mortar store where they would use a standard credit card. To further facilitate these transactions, TenX has provided for the card to convert the digital currency which is stored within it into the local fiat currency, allowing for global use. This last point in particular is especially helpful, as a barrier to spending virtual currency in the past has been the necessity to convert it into local currency, adding a timestaking additional step and potential fees.

For the time being, TenX's platform supports Dash, Bitcoin, and Ethereum, among other lesser-known currencies. The company has ties with Ethereum, as Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the latter, is an official advisor to TenX. The app is fully functional and ready for distribution into the broader world. More and more talk is emerging about cryptocurrency debit cards as a possible way of linking the virtual with the tangible. TenX hopes to lead the charge in bringing cryptocurrency spending into stores across the globe.

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Could TenX Make Cryptocurrency More Usable In the Real World? - Investopedia

Cryptocurrency ICO vs Cryptocurrency Pre-ICO – The Merkle

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The world of cryptocurrency ICOs has been on fire as of late. In most cases, these ICOs cause quite a bit of strain on the Ethereum network, which is anything but enjoyable. It now appears a lot of projects are running so-called pre-ICO token sales as well. This allows teams to collect even more money, while investors get cheaper tokens.

The concept of a cryptocurrency ICO has been documented quite a few times already. In fact, we have a whole series on this particular market phenomenon, which covers most of the information people need to know. Although investing in a cryptocurrency ICO can be quite lucrative, it is taking longer for tokens to get listed on decent exchanges. This causes a lot of users to get quite nervous about their investment, which is understandable.

This brings us to how cryptocurrency ICOs are currently developing. The money is raised a lot quicker compared to how much time it takes to sort out technical issues, refunds, and getting listed on exchanges. To a lot of people, this makes no sense, especially when projects raise over $10m during their ICO. Surely they could use that money to speed up the listing process and make investors a lot happier? Unfortunately, that is not how things work right now.

Contrary to what most people expect, there is a lot more to getting listed on an exchange than just paying a fee. Especially where ERC20 tokens are concerned, as smart contracts need to be audited by a third party. This causes some delays, which means some investors will panic sell on smaller exchanges as a way to minimize losses. If this trend keeps up, a lot of ICO projects will go under well below they even get a listing on Bittrex or Poloniex. That is very unfortunate, to say the least.

This brings us to a somewhat newer phenomenon, which is known as a pre-ICO token sale. As the name suggests, a pre-ICO allows investors to buy tokens before the official crowdsale begins. In most cases, these pre-ICOs raise a much smaller amount of money, and offer tokens at a lower price with a substantial bonus. More specifically, finding a pre-ICO with a bonus of 40% or more compared to the ICO price is not all that uncommon.

It is worth noting a pre-ICO often uses a very different smart contract compared to the actual ICO itself. This is done to separate funds and ensure these is no confusion. However, it can also create some uncertainty regarding how much money has been raised in total. Since the pre-ICO numbers are not included in the actual ICO numbers, there can be some sort of a discrepancy. Plus, it also means there may be far more tokens issued than people initially assume.

When a project launches a pre-ICO token sale, they need to do their due diligence. Being transparent about the money raised and the number of tokens issued is of the utmost importance. Onenegative side effect of pre-ICOs is how early investors often sell at ICO prices once a token hits an exchange. In doing so, they still make a very big profit and cripple the tokens price in the process. A pre-ICO is an amazing investment opportunity for a quick buck, but it can hurt the projects appeal and credibility when large amounts of tokens are sold at bottom prices.

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What is the Biggest Security Threat to Ripple Cryptocurrency? – Investopedia

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Ripple may be the latest craze in the cryptocurrency world. Although its price still lags far behind Ethereum and Bitcoin, it has nonetheless gained 3800% in recent months, catapulting it to the number 3 spot on the list of over 100 cryptocurrencies with regard to market capitalization. What's more important, perhaps, is the technology that Ripple offers aside from its currency. The Ripple blockchain protocol has gained recognition by more than 60 major financial institutions around the world, with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi one of the latest to incorporate it into its practices. Ripple has, in this way, broken a barrier that virtually no other cryptocurrency has, by finding a way to integrate itself within the broader financial world. To some, this spells a new way for the future of the digital currency industry. To others, though, Ripple has some significant security weaknesses. What could bring down this rising star?

A recent report by Technology Review discusses how Ripple has made use of a "small world" philosophy. According to this way of thinking, virtually anyone in the world can be connected to anyone else via approximately six steps. "Strangers" can thus be connected to one another via a few intermediary people, all of whom know each other in some capacity. For Ripple, this idea holds for transferring money: Ripple users establish connections with other users that they trust, and then funds are transferred along a chain to reach the ultimate recipient in a transaction.

Within Ripple, if a user has connections to two other users, the amounts of funds entrusted to each will likely vary, while the total transferred is kept constant in order to generate liquidity. Each user has an incentive to act as the intermediary, as he or she receives a small payment for the role. With this protocol, Ripple allows users to move funds quickly and for much less money in transaction fees than many other methods of money transfer. This has popularized the system with many banks that would have otherwise not been interested in a cryptocurrency.

The openness with which the Ripple network operates has, on the other hand, also allowed for vulnerabilities to develop. Researchers at Purdue University have found that, although the core of the network remains highly liquid, that the structure also allows for attacks on certain nodes within the network to cripple some users' access to funds. In fact, some 50,000 wallets may be immediately at risk if such an attack were to occur. However, the researchers suggest that the fact that they have been able to detect weaknesses in Ripple's system is actually a good thing, as the conventional world of banking often lacks transparency in this regard. Having identified those weaknesses, Ripple's developers may be able to work to correct them.

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What is the Biggest Security Threat to Ripple Cryptocurrency? - Investopedia

Top 3 Recent Cryptocurrency ICOs Sorting Out Major Issues – The Merkle

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If there is one thing to take away from most cryptocurrency ICOs as of late, it is how most of them run into some issue sooner or later. The Status ICO, for example, caused quite a few issues. The Monaco ICO needs to get tokens reissued, a process which is expected to be completed soon. It is evident there are a lot of issues behind the scenes which need to be worked out sooner or later. Below is a brief recap of recent ICOs currently resolving initial issues.

Although the SONM ICO has been quite successful in its own right, it is not without flaws by any means. A lot of people were surprised when the team announced they would accept multiple cryptocurrencies other than Ether. In hindsight, that was probably a bad decision, as it is causing major delays for ICO investors. More specifically, the team is still in the process of allocating tokens to investors who used currencies other than ETH to invest in the ICO. A very problematic development, and one that can linger for quite some time.

To make things even worse, a fair few investors are not too happy about the way things have been run. It is a bit unclear where this beef is coming from, but some investors have demanded a refund. Sorting out these issues takes up a lot of valuable time as well, which further delays the SNM token from getting listed on big exchanges. It appears SONM will sort things out shortly, but it is something to take into account.

The Status ICO has been subject to a lot of speculation and misinformation over the past week or so. It appears the smart contract used for the ICO was not full, but with the large pending queue of transactions, a lot of investors could not make a contribution. As a result, the Ethereum network got clogged up and started slowing down quite significantly The team feels this is no ones fault, as blockchains are highly experimental technology, and Ethereum is still in the testing phase. An interesting statement, although not a lot of people will agree.

Moreover, the Status team somewhat regrets using a dynamic ceiling for their cryptocurrency ICO. It is one of the main reasons why so many Ethereum transactions took place, as the maximum amount of Ether was a lot higher compared to what the team initially hoped to raise. It caused quite a bit of confusion and a lot of scaling issues for the network. It is evident this test was a good one, as it shows the Ethereum network is far less capable in this regard than most people think.

The Monaco ICO has proven to be quite successful, as many people feel this cryptocurrency debit card can make a big impact. Unfortunately, the ICO has been a bit of a hit-and-miss so far. Granted, the project raised a good amount of money, and people from all over the world invested in the crowdsale. That is where the good news ends, though, as none of the investors have received their official MCO tokens so far. The team is working together with TokenMarket to reissue the coins as quickly as possible.

The tokens have to be reissued because of an issue in the initial smart contract, which could cause multisig wallet incompatibility. All of the tokens have been issued on the Kovan testnet, and so far, things appear to be going quite well. However, it will take a few more days until all tokens are issued to investors, due to the ongoing Ethereum network issues. If all things go according to plan, tokens should be issued and tradeable by June 27th in the evening, at the latest. It is good to see TokenMarket work on this matter alongside the Monaco team.

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Top 3 Recent Cryptocurrency ICOs Sorting Out Major Issues - The Merkle

What is WikiLeaks and Who is Julian Assange? – Law Street Media

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You may have noticed WikiLeaks coming up in the news a few times lately. Recently, its founder, Julian Assange, saw the Swedish investigation into rape allegations levied against him suspendedalthough he does still face arrest if he leaves the Ecuadorian embassy in London. And Chelsea Manning, who leaked a massive number of documents to WikiLeaks, was just released from prison after her sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama.

Wikileaks, which was launched in 2006 with the purpose of providing government and other relevant documents to citizens, has been all over the news since its inception. But what exactly is it, who is its founder, and why do you need to about it? Read on to learn more.

Wikileaks officially launched in 2006 and the first document was posted in December of that year, but the domain name WikiLeaks was registered that October.

WikiLeaks calls itself a not-for-profit media organization that seeks to increase transparency worldwide. Despite the similarity in names, theres no connection between WikiLeaks and Wikipedia. Instead, WikiLeaks is associated with an organization called Sunshine Press, which handles some of the private aspects of WikiLeaks business.

WikiLeaksstates its missionas:

Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure, and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.

Australian Julian Assange is usually attributed as its main founderalthough there are many other people, some anonymous, who worked on the project. Alsoassociated with the project was investigative journalist Gavin MacFadyen, Assanges mentor. He was the director of WikiLeaks. Before his death in 2016, MacFadyen founded the Julian Assange Legal Defense Committee. Sarah Harrison,a British journalist and researcher, has also been publicly identified as one of the organizations associates. Shes best known for aidingEdward Snowdens trip out of the U.S.after he leaked a trove of classified documents.Many of the other people associated with WikiLeaks are anonymous, but the organization claims that they include accredited journalists, software programmers, network engineers, mathematicians, and others.

How Does WikiLeaks Operate?

The organization is somewhat secretive in how it operates. But it is currently funded by donors and has no one permanent location or office. It has servers in multiple countriesand claims it does so to protect the organization in case one country decides to crack down on its operations. In 2016, Assange told Der Spiegel that the organization had posted over 10 million documents in 10 years.According to WikiLeaks, it is sent documents anonymously through email or other anonymous electronic means, and then those documents are vetted and uploadedalthough it isimportant to note that therehas been significant criticism about the veracity of some of those documents. WikiLeaks has occasionally workedwith media organizations, including Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and The New York Times, although its relationships with some of those organizations have fluctuated over the years.

Chelsea Manning

Chelsea Manning is one of the most widely-known names associated with WikiLeaks. Manning, a U.S. soldier then known asPte First Class Bradley Manning, sent more than 720,000 secret documents to WikiLeaks in 2010. At the time, she was working as an intelligence analyst.One of the most notable things included in this leak was video footage of a U.S. helicopter firing on and killing Iraqi citizens and journalists in 2007. She also leakedState Department cables, information related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and data about the prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

Manning was convicted of 20 charges associated with this leak, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. President Barack Obama commuted most of Mannings sentence before he left office. When she was released in May 2017, she had spent seven years in prison.Mannings sentence was controversial; many claimed it was too harsh, including advocates for whistleblower protections, transparency, and some human rights groups like Amnesty International. Others claimed that the punishment fit the crime. President Donald Trump, for instance, has called Manning an ungrateful TRAITOR.

Mannings punishment was complicated by the fact that she is a transwoman who was confined in a mens prison. Mannings difficulty transitioning while incarcerated was made public, and her struggles to obtain that care worried human rights advocates.

The video below discusses Chelsea Mannings case in more detail:

Edward Snowden

Perhaps the most recognizable whistleblower in the world is Edward Snowden. Snowden worked for the CIA and then for well-known government consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2013,he leaked hundreds of thousands of documents that, among other things, revealed the NSAs surveillance of American citizens as well as information about British surveillance programs.

Snowden did not release this information to WikiLeaks, instead, he gave the documents to media sources. According to Snowden, the only two who were given the full array of documents wereGlenn Greenwald, who worked for The Guardian and Laura Poitras, who later made Citizenfour, the award-winning documentary about Snowden. However, in the aftermath of the leaks, Snowden was aided by WikiLeaks-associated individuals. After Snowden fled the United States, Sarah Harrison helped him get set up in Russia and avoid American detection. WikiLeaks also submitted asylum requests to multiple countries on Snowdens behalf.

Since 2013,Snowden has been loosely associated with WikiLeaks at other times. At various points, Snowden has weighed in on the accuracy of documents leaked by the organization. For example, in March 2017, Snowden publicly said that he believed the documents related to CIA hacking techniques released by WikiLeaks were true.

But, Snowden has also been critical of WikiLeaks. In July 2016,Snowden criticized WikiLeaks for not curating the information it released, instead just indiscriminately posting documents related to the U.S. election. In response, WikiLeaks accused Snowden of trying to curry favor with the then-front-runner in the election, Hillary Clinton.

There are lots of criticisms consistently levied against WikiLeaks and the people associated with it. Here are some of the most prevalent:

Julian Assanges Legal Troubles

Julian Assange has spent the last five years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange was accused of sexual assault by two women in Stockholm, Sweden in 2010. Assange claims that the sexual encounters with the two women were both consensual and that they were only accusing him of assault because of political reasons. In 2012, Assange sought asylum from Ecuador and was granted the ability to stay in the countrys embassy in London. While Sweden recently announced that it was no longer seeking his arrest, he still isnt likely to leave the embassy any time soon. U.K. officials have said they can arrest him on other charges, like jumping bail. And if hes extradited to the United States, he could be subject to a variety of charges related to WikiLeaks. If he is ever extradited to the U.S. forcharges related to release of documents stolen by ChelseaManning, he could be in serious trouble.

Redactions Wanted

WikiLeaks leak all for transparencys sake approach to releasing information has garnered it some criticism. In July 2016, WikiLeaks claimed to publish a number of documents related to Turkish PresidentRecep Tayyip Erdogan. The so-called Erdogan emails didnt really appear to contain any political bombshells, but did include links to databases containing the information of Turkish citizens. One database had the personal information of almost every woman in the country. The info included things like addresses, cell phone numbers, and political information. Essentially, WikiLeaks doxxed almosthalf the country. While the files were eventually taken down, WikiLeaks was criticized for going beyond transparency to potentially harming private individuals.

2016 Election Hacks

WikiLeaks has recently been criticized for its role leaking documents pertaining to the 2016 election. WikiLeaks leaked DNC emails that reflected negatively on Hillary Clintons presidency campaign. Charlie Savage of theNew York Times arguedthat Assange specifically timedthe release of the DNC emails to come out at the most politically damaging time for Clinton, a claim bolstered by Assanges own admission that he saw Clinton as a personal foe. In addition to releasing emails from the DNC, Wikileaks also published a trove of emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podestas personal email account. Those were also released in batches in a way that kept much of the information in the news as the campaign progressed. WikiLeaks has even been accused of colluding with Russias attempts to propel now-President Donald Trump to the presidency. The U.S. intelligence community issued a reportthatattributed the DNC hack to Russian intelligence services, which caused many to question the extent to which WikiLeaks is associated with the Russian government. WikiLeaks has refused to divulge the source of the documents and has so far denied any connection with Russia.

As a political topic, WikiLeaks is no doubt controversial. In the era of fake news, and distrust in the media and government institutions, WikiLeaks has often garnered credit for being willing to provide ordinary citizens with primary sources. On the other hand, WikiLeaks mystique, founders legal issues, and accusations of bias and irresponsible dissemination of information has led to plenty of criticism. In fact, in the last year, plentyof think pieces have been written, accusing WikiLeaks of losing its friends and losing the moral high ground. But given the space it has carved out as a repository for leaked information, and the relative fame of some of the people associated with it, including Julian Assange, its unlikely to disappear from our radars anytime soon.

Anneliese Mahoney is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelors degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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What is WikiLeaks and Who is Julian Assange? - Law Street Media

Edward Snowden Bashes New CIA Chief’s Focus On Leakers – HuffPost

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Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and his Twitter followers are scratching their heads over the new CIA directors recently expressed disgust at the worship of those who leak information like Snowden did.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo, appointed by Donald Trump, said the U.S needs to step up efforts to stop leaks of classified and other information.

I do think its accelerated, Pompeo told MSNBCs Hugh Hewitt in an interview, portions of which aired Saturday on MSNBC. I think there is a phenomenon, the worship of Edward Snowden, and those who steal American secrets for the purpose of self-aggrandizement or money or for whatever their motivation may be, does seem to be on the increase.

He referred tonot only nation-states trying to steal our stuff, but [also] non-state, hostile intelligence services, well-funded folks like WikiLeaks out there trying to steal American secrets for the sole purpose of undermining the United States and democracy.

Snowden, in exile in Russia from U.S. treason charges for exposing the NSAs widespread digital surveillance of law-abiding Americans, said the CIA cant seem to figure out why the public respects those who reveal official crimes more than those who commit them.

Twitter responses to the Pompeo interview denied that people worship whistleblowers and leakers, but said they do tend to respect them.

Some responses noted it was troubling that leaks about possible corruption and crimes appeared to be more important to authorities than actual corruption and crimes.

Pompeos focus on leaks is similar to the presidents. Trump believes those who leak information whether classified or not should be sought out and prosecuted. After booted FBI Director James Comey revealed that he leaked informationabout his meetings with Trump, the president called it illegal.The information from Comey, however, may have revealed possibleobstruction of justice by the president.

Trump himself leaked classified information from a secret source on the Islamic State tovisiting Russian officials in May. He also praised WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign (I love WikiLeaks! he said at a campaign rally) when it revealed embarrassing emails from the Democratic National Committee and he encouraged Russia to hack Hillary Clintons emails. Pompeo, too, encouraged people to read the emails hacked by WikiLeaks when he was a Kansas congressman.

I can only say this, Pompeo said in the interview. We, and I would say all of President Trumps government, is incredibly focused on both stopping leaks of any kind from any agency, and when they happen, pursuing them with incredible vigor.

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Edward Snowden Bashes New CIA Chief's Focus On Leakers - HuffPost

Perils of Back Door Encryption Mandates – Human Rights Watch

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(Washington, DC) The governments that constitute the intelligence partnership known as The Five Eyes, will meet on June 26-27, 2017, in Ottawa to discuss how to bypass encryption. The governments may pursue a dangerous strategy that will subvert the rights and cybersecurity of all internet users.

People sit at computersinside GCHQ, Britain's intelligence agency,in Cheltenham, UK, November 17, 2015.

Encryption protects billions of ordinary people worldwide from criminals and authoritarian regimes, said Cynthia Wong, senior internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. Agencies charged with protecting national security shouldnt be trying to undermine a cornerstone of security in the digital age.

The Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing partnership between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Law enforcement and intelligence agency representatives from each state will gather in Ottawa to discuss shared national security concerns. The meeting is expected to address the increasing use of end-to-end encrypted communications as a challenge to surveillance and seek a coordinated approach.

In recent years, law enforcement officials in some Five Eyes countries have contended that they are losing some of their ability to investigate crime or prevent terrorism because advances in consumer encryption have led some channels of information that were previously accessible to go dark. Companies like Apple and WhatsApp have begun to integrate end-to-end encryption into their products by default, which makes it impossible for even the companies to retrieve unscrambled user data at the request of the government because the firms do not hold the decryption keys. Some officials have gone further and sought legislation to ensure that their governments can access all encrypted data, even if this would force companies to build back doors or other vulnerabilities into phones and applications to bypass encryption.

Australian Attorney General George Brandis plans to raise the need for new restrictions on the encryption built into popular messaging applications with Five Eyes counterparts, stating that existing laws dont go far enough.

In March, in the immediate aftermath of the Westminster attack, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd called end-to-end encryption on apps such as WhatsApp completely unacceptable and stated that there should be no place for terrorists to hide. On June 13, UK Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a counter-terrorism joint action plan that calls for greater access to encrypted communications.

The UKs Investigatory Powers Act allows authorities to compel companies to take undefined reasonable and practicable measures to facilitate interception, including of unencrypted data. Authorities are still determining the exact scope of what companies will be required to do under the law with respect to encryption.

Law enforcement officials in the US have also repeatedly called for companies to build back doors into encryption. In 2016, media reports released draft legislation that would have required technology companies to provide access to encrypted information in an intelligible format upon court order. The bill did not specify how companies would have to unscramble encrypted information, but it would have effectively forced companies to bypass encryption and other security features. The bill faced widespread criticism from security experts and privacy groups as unworkable and harmful to cybersecurity and was never formally introduced.

In February 2016, US authorities also sought a court order to force Apple to build a back door into an iPhone that was used by one of the attackers in the 2015 San Bernardino attack. Apple challenged the order, and authorities eventually withdrew it because they were able to access the phones data without Apples help.

In 2016, Canada held a consultation on its national security framework, which expressed concern over security agencies diminished ability to investigate crimes due to the use of encryption. It also stated that Canada had no legal procedure to require decryption.

Many officials from Five Eyes countries claim they do not seek back doors. But they dont explain how companies that dont hold encryption keys could provide exceptional access for law enforcement to unencrypted data without a back door. To implement such a requirement, companies would be forced to redesign their products without security features like end-to-end encryption.

Back doors create weaknesses that can be exploited by malicious hackers or other abusive government agencies. Billions of people worldwide rely on encryption to protect them from threats to critical infrastructure like the electrical grid and from cybercriminals who steal data for financial gain or espionage. The vast majority of users who rely on encryption have no connection to wrongdoing.

Encryption built into phones and messaging apps can also help safeguard human rights defenders and journalists from abusive surveillance and reprisals, including threats of physical violence. In 2015, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, recognized that encryption enables the exercise of freedom of expression, privacy, and a range of other rights in the digital age.

Governments have an obligation to investigate and prosecute crime and protect the public from threats of violence. But proposals to weaken encryption in popular products will not prevent determined criminals or terrorists from using strong encryption to shield their communications. A recent survey shows that determined, malicious actors would still be able to access such tools made by companies outside the Five Eyes countries, which would not be subject to their laws.

Ordinary users will be more vulnerable to harm, online and offline, if technology firms are forced to weaken the security of their products, Human Rights Watch said. Instead of weakening encryption, governments should better train law enforcement officials to use investigative tools already at their disposal, including access to the vast pool of metadata from digital communications or location data that is not encrypted, consistent with human rights requirements.

If the Five Eyes countries force tech companies to build encryption back doors, it would set a troubling global precedent that will be followed by authoritarian regimes seeking the same, Wong said. These governments should promote strong encryption instead of trying to punch holes in it, which would lead to a race to the bottom for global cybersecurity and privacy.

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Perils of Back Door Encryption Mandates - Human Rights Watch


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