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This focus captures the vision of the school, he explained. We thought it appropriate that the first conference feature conversations about the attributes of data science theories and practices that we aim to embody, advance and use.

Equity in data science includes accessibility and inclusion, prioritizing the availability of artificial intelligence (AI) technology and training. Informed data science centers on the awareness of how tech can be used to create sustainable social impact through collaboration with fields outside of math, science and statistics. Finally, Los Datos prioritizes discussions of security, in a nod to UTSAs role as a national leader in cybersecurity education and innovation.

UTSA is one of just a few universities in the nationand the only Hispanic Serving Institutionto hold three National Center of Excellence designations from the National Security Agency and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The School of Data Science is the first school of its kind in Texas.

Given the triple focus of the event, Los Datos will serve as a confluence of key players in data science, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. Mongeau said the School of Data Science is currently collaborating with Frost Bank, various independent school districts and start-ups around San Antonio, Mexico-based private university Tec de Monterrey and government agencies such as the NSA and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Our community of collaborators is dispersed and does not always have occasion to get together to learn from one another, Mongeau said. Los Datos Conference provides an occasion for these collaborators to come together.

At the same time, the conference is intended to enhance data science collaboration within UTSA. With the schools data science faculty spread across numerous colleges and departments, Los Datos will feature an incredibly diverse field of scientific and academic endeavors, from computer science and statistics to anthropology and music.

Our faculty will be exchanging information about the data science methods and tools that they use to solve real scientific and societal problems, which will lead to some recognizing how others approaches can be adapted and adopted, Mongeau said.

While Los Datos is geared toward data scientists, analysts, researchers and students who have at least a foundational understanding of data science and artificial intelligence concepts, Mongeau notes that the conference also serves as an outreach to the community that has been so supportive of the School of Data Science.

In fact, Los Datos Conference is timed to coincide with Fiesta San Antonio, the 10-day festival celebrating San Antonio culture, and those who attend the conference will receive a special Fiesta medal as another way to celebrate the universitys local roots.

Mongeau believes that San Antonios community and flourishing tech industry, combined with UTSAs academic and research strengths, will allow the School of Data Science to continue developing as a leader in data science nationally, and he hopes that Los Datos Conference will be an annual occasion to demonstrate that leadership and benefit others.

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Inaugural Los Datos Conference to focus on creating a more ... - UTSA

Pentagon leaks 2023

The subject matter may differ but the US government has been relentless in pursuing those accused of national security leaks

Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Massachusetts air national guard member who was charged on Friday with leaking classified Pentagon documents, has joined a long list of individuals who have been prosecuted for allegedly disclosing sensitive US national security intelligence.

Previous leaks have ranged from information about US wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan to details of Russian interference in American elections. Despite the diversity of the subject matter, the treatment of the leakers has shared a common relentlessness on the part of the US government in pursuing those it accuses of breaching its trust.

In March 1971, Ellsberg, a military analyst, leaked a top-secret study to the New York Times. The document, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, spanned US involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967 and exposed covert efforts by successive US presidents to escalate the conflict while hiding deep doubts about the chances of victory.

Ellsberg was prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act a law designed to catch first world war spies and faced a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison. All charges were dropped after the FBIs illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg was revealed.

Early last month, the 92-year-old Ellsberg, who has become revered as the doyen of whistleblowers, revealed that he has terminal cancer and has months to live.

Sterling, a former CIA operations officer, served more than two years of a 42-month sentence after he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking information about a botched covert US operation with Iran to the then New York Times journalist James Risen. In 2003, Risen published details of the operation in a book, State of War.

It was not until 2011, under Barack Obamas administration, that Sterling was arrested. Federal prosecutors accused him of leaking details of the Iran engagement out of anger and resentment a reference to an earlier claim from Sterling, who is Black, that he suffered discrimination while at the CIA.

Sterling has denied ever talking to Risen about Iran.

A former senior official with the National Security Agency (NSA), Drake was charged in 2010 with leaking classified information to the Baltimore Sun. He faced 10 counts with a possible 35-year sentence, though the charges were whittled down to a single misdemeanor for which he was given a year of probation.

Drake has always insisted that he had no intention of harming national security, presenting himself as a whistleblower who had been trying to sound the alarm on technical flaws in NSA programs that were wasting billions of dollars.

As a former intelligence analyst posted outside Baghdad during the Iraq war, Manning had access to classified information that shone a light on the vagaries of war there and in Afghanistan. She leaked hundreds of thousands of military records and diplomatic cables via the open information site WikiLeaks in 2010 in one of the largest disclosures of military secrets in US history.

Three years later, she was convicted under the Espionage Act. She was given a 35-year sentence, of which she served seven. In a memoir published last year, README.txt, she wrote: What I did during my enlistment was an act of rebellion, of resistance, and of civic disobedience.

Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for leaking the identity of a covert operative to a journalist. He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for doing so.

Prosecutors insisted that they went after Kiriakou to protect the safety of undercover government agents. He countered that he was a whistleblower attempting to expose the use of torture in the so-called war on terror.

Kiriakou was the first former government official to talk in public about waterboarding, the form of controlled drowning used against terrorism suspects in the aftermath of 9/11.

In 2013 Snowden disclosed inside intelligence about the US governments dragnet surveillance of the digital communications of millions of Americans through the Guardian and Washington Post. Working at the time as an NSA contractor, he fled to Hong Kong and from there to Russia, where he was granted asylum.

After he outed himself through the Guardian, a raft of Republican politicians demanded that Snowden be extradited back to the US to face trial as a traitor. Donald Trump called for his execution three years before he was elected US president.

In his support, a number of prominent public figures, including Ellsberg, have lauded Snowden as a pro-democracy hero who should be allowed to come home with a pardon.

The former NSA intelligence contractor and air force linguist was sentenced to more than five years under the Espionage Act in 2018 for leaking a top-secret document on Russian interference in the US presidential election. She pleaded guilty to having handed a copy of a classified report about Russian hacking of voting software suppliers in the 2016 race.

She was released after three years. Having regained her freedom she told CBS: I am not a traitor, I am not a spy. I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for.

The WikiLeaks founder was initially charged in 2019 with conspiring to hack into a military computer an accusation arising out of the massive leak by Manning to WikiLeaks nine years earlier. The seriousness of prosecutors case against him was dramatically expanded later that year to include 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act.

Assange has been held for the past four years in Belmarsh prison in London as extradition proceedings work their way through British courts. The Joe Biden White House has come under mounting pressure to drop the charges, including from leading news outlets, on grounds that the prosecution is putting a chill on press freedom.

The air national guardsman now finds his name added to the list. He was charged in a Boston federal court on Friday with two counts under the Espionage Act, each carrying a possible 10-year sentence.

Prosecutors allege that they have evidence to prove that Teixeira unlawfully retained and transmitted hundreds of classified defence documents. The FBI has indicated that he enjoyed security clearance for sensitive intelligence marked top secret/sensitive compartmented information.

The leak of the Pentagon documents is believed to have started on the social media platform Discord. Teixeira reportedly visited the platform over several years posting about guns, online games and racist memes, though any motive for the alleged leak remains obscure.

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From Ellsberg to Assange: Jack Teixeira joins list of alleged leakers - The Guardian US

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Punjab Police failed to arrest fugitive Khalistani leader Amritpal Singh, on the run for the past 32 days. The searches in Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and in the border areas with Nepal have been unsuccessful. The police now suspect he may be hiding in villages along the borders of Punjab-Haryana or Punjab-Rajasthan.

After escaping the police dragnet on March 18, the Waris Punjab De's chief, Amritpal Singh, released a video on March 29 and claimed he managed to escape and was safe.

Who is helping Amritpal Singh?

Singh managed to evade the police at least twice while in Punjab. His springing hints that there was a leniency on the part of Punjab Police and other agencies which might have helped him easily escape. The escapades also appear like a well-scripted thriller.

Also Read | 'Amritpal Singh wanted' posters put up in Punjabs Gurdaspur, rewards announced

The question now is who is helping him. The deployment of police and other forces and their failure to arrest him have been questioned by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Sikh leaders openly said that the case against Amritpal Singh has deep-rooted political implications.

"A huge force was deployed to arrest Amritpal Singh but he escaped. The government is now trying to vent its frustration with the public. Houses were raided. It was said he was in Pilibhit, in Rajasthan's Kalibangan. What is their fault for being harassed?" asked former Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Jasbir Singh Rode, who is heading a committee to help the families of Singh's aides charged under the NSA.

But where is Amritpal hiding? Sources in the police said he is somewhere in the country and has not fled India. Had he managed to flee, he would have released a video as he claimed in the previous one released in March that he would appear before the public.

Amritpal isolated, disgraced

Escaping the police has eroded Amritpal Singh's image as a hardline Khalistani. He used to claim that he would never run away and desert his supporters before the police launched their massive crackdown.

Also Read | Man, woman who helped Amritpal Singh flee detained in Mohali: Sources

While nine of his aides were arrested and charged under the NSA, Singh was left on his own on March 28 at Marnaiyan in Hoshiarpur, when his close aide Papalpreet ran in a different direction.

Papalpreet Singh, who was arrested on April 10 from Amritsar's Kathu Nangal, previously arranged logistics and refuge for Amritpal for 11 days between March 18 and March 28.

Amritpal, as per the police sources, stayed at the Rajpur Bhaian village on March 28. The police arrested Kuldeep Singh and Hardeep Singh, who sheltered him.

It was said that Amritpal managed to give the police a slip and went to Uttar Pradesh. There were speculations that he wanted to surrender before the Punjab Police on the eve of Baisakhi. There were also some leads that he might be hiding in Sangria, Hanumangarh. The Punjab Police and their Rajasthan counterparts raided Sangria's Santpur areas on April 12 and April 13.

Also Read | Punjab: Court sends Amritpal's key aide to three-day police remand

They also searched in Sirsa's Nagrana on April 16 based on inputs that Singh was hiding in the house of his supporter, Kehr Singh.

Interestingly, while the Akal Takht did not accept Amritpal's demand to hold a Sarbat Khalsa, it opposed the decision to invoke NSA against him and his aides. His alleged proposal to surrender at a religious place was also not entertained. The Akal Takht chief in fact asked him to surrender before the police.

Crackdown on Amritpal irks Akal Takht, SGPC

Sikh authorities, including the highest temporal authorities - the Akal Takht and the SGPC, have conveyed their displeasure with the invoking of NSA against Amritpal Singh and his aides.

"We have decided to extend legal and financial help to the families of those arrested under the NSA. This matter is neither economic nor legal. This is a political matter," Jasbir Singh Rode said.

Also Read | Punjab Police arrests woman who sheltered Amritpal Singh for 6 hours

The crackdown on Singh and his supporters, besides the pro-Khalistani social media channels, annoyed the Akal Takht so much that it termed the action 'anti-Sikh'. The deployment of police at religious places was also opposed.

The national media also faced its ire and were accused of defaming the Sikh community. The Akal Takht even set up a cell to monitor the national news channels and threatened to sue the media houses.

The SGPC, the organisation that manages the gurdwaras, has now decided to render financial and legal aid to the families of Singh's nine aides who have been charged with the NSA.

The body arranged a meeting of these families with the accused in Assam's Dibrugarh, where they have been lodged for security reasons, on Thursday but it did not happen as the group failed to meet the deadline.

Also Read | Amritpal's aide Joga Singh who helped him hide in Pilibhit arrested

The rest is here:
32 days on, Amritpal Singh on the run despite police searches, raids - India Today

Louisiana State University (LSU) and five Louisiana ports have forged a partnership to develop a pipeline of cybersecurity talent and technology in support of the state and the nations critical infrastructure. The collaboration, which grew out of the schools Scholarship First Agenda, brings together the universitys burgeoning cybersecurity expertise with the river ports of Greater Baton Rouge, South Louisiana, New Orleans and St. Bernard, along with Port Fourchon, the states leading coastal energy port.

The memorandum of understanding between LSU and the ports makes the university their official academic research partner. Under the plan, LSU students and faculty will work with the ports to tackle both current and emerging cyber issues. The partnership could include the development of cybersecurity testbeds, or controlled cyber environments that allow for experimentation, along with joint research and broader collaboration with state and federal security and law enforcement agencies. According to the announcement from LSU, the partnerships primary goal will be to create a pipeline of homegrown cyber talent for Louisiana.

The agreement builds on LSUs designation in 2022 as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Like our students and research expertise, Louisianas port system impacts every corner of the state and has national and global reach, LSU President William Tate said. The Scholarship First Agenda elevates domains that meet citizens most pressing needs and define Louisianas role in the world. These areasagriculture, biomedicine, coast, defense (including cybersecurity) and energyall converge in Louisianas ports. Our designation last year by the [NSA] as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations, or CAE-CO, positions us as one of the best and most technical cybersecurity schools in the country, and were now connecting our talented students and experts with our friends here at Louisianas ports to tackle cybersecurity and critical infrastructure challenges across Louisiana.

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The critical nature of Louisianas ports, specifically the five that are part of the LSU cybersecurity partnership, is clear. The ports of Greater Baton Rouge, South Louisiana, New Orleans and St. Bernard comprise the largest port complex in the world. Overall, 20 percent of all jobs in Louisiana rely on the states ports.

The Port of Greater Baton Rouge ranks eighth in total tonnage nationally and handles a wide range of commodities, including asphalt, coal, coffee, forest products, biomass, chemicals, oats, pipes, steel and sugar.

As one of the countrys top ports in total tonnage, we pride ourselves in our ability to adapt to emerging needs, said Jay Hardman, executive director of the Port of Greater Baton Rouge. From our docks, we have direct lines of sight to both the Capitol and LSUs campus, so we are well-positioned and excited to work with this group on cybersecurity challenges and talent development.

The Port of South Louisiana is the second largest port in the Western Hemisphere by tonnage and the nations leading grain port. More than 60 percent of U.S. grain exports leave through the Port of South Louisiana, along with 100 million tons of petrochemical products exported annually. Both agricultural products and petrochemicals have national security and global security significance.

The commerce that happens along the Lower Mississippi River at the Port of South Louisiana is intertwined with the national security of the United States, Port of South Louisiana CEO Paul Matthews said. This partnership with LSU and our sister ports will ensure that our states infrastructure and assets are protected in this ever-evolving cybersecurity landscape.

In New Orleans, cybersecurity concerns extend to cruise ship traffic and container handling, in addition to bulk cargo ships, cargo handling and towboat and tugboat traffic. The Port of New Orleans operates the states only international container terminal and the nations sixth largest cruise business.

Louisianas maritime assets create jobs and connect our state to global markets, and the Port of New Orleans is proud to partner with LSU and all Louisianas deepwater ports to raise the cybersecurity bar to ensure the highest levels of protection of our critical port infrastructurenow and into the future, said Brandy Christian, president and CEO of the Port of New Orleans.

The only deep draft slackwater slip on the Lower Mississippi River is located within St. Bernard Port, which employs close to 20 percent of St. Bernard Parish. The port sees an annual average of more than 10 million tons of cargo move through its terminals.

Given our unique position as a primary bulk handler of everything from metals for advanced manufacturing to fertilizer for our national and state food producers, as well as the only place on the Lower Mississippi with a deepwater slip, we fully recognize the importance of cybersecurity and protecting these assets, said Drew Heaphy, executive director of St. Bernard Port. We appreciate the opportunity to participate and look forward to working closely with LSU on talent development and retention and projects critical to our operations.

Along the coast, almost all of the Gulf of Mexicos offshore energy production and one-sixth of the nations oil supply are serviced by Port Fourchon in Lafourche Parish.

Our agency has a rich history as a leader in cybersecurity-related affairs, as do the other ports we are joined with today for this announcement, said Chett Chiasson, executive director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission. We look forward to assisting with this worthwhile endeavor moving forward because we understand how vital cybersecurity is, for not only our region, but our nation.

Besides the pipeline for expertise the partnership will foster, it will also enable LSU and partner ports to work with federal and other research groups in the fields of defense, homeland security and intelligence. LSU, which already operates student-run Security Operations Centers at its Baton Rouge and Shreveport campuses, will also offer threat intelligence and incident response for ports and the states cyber emergency response efforts.

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LSU Partners With Louisiana Ports To Tackle Cybersecurity ... - The Waterways Journal

NSA leaders are fighting to persuade Congress to renew a controversial law that cuts red tape for intelligence agencies eavesdropping on foreign actors but which has also been improperly used hundreds of times to collect data on Americans.

So FISA Section 702 is up for renewal this year. And it is a vital source of intelligence. It is an authority that lets us do collection against a known foreign entity who chooses to use U.S. infrastructure, Rob Joyce, the National Security Agencys cybersecurity director, said Tuesday during a Center for Strategic and International Studies event. It makes sure that we don't afford the same protections to those foreign malicious actors who are on our infrastructure as we do the Americans who live here.

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, gives the U.S. government the ability to digitally spy on foreign targets outside of the U.S. without a warrant. But civil-liberties groups have documented hundreds of times that U.S. citizens social-media interactions, phone calls, and emails have accidentally been gathered in 702-related surveillance. New America calls such violations inadvertent or unintentional yet extremely concerning because they reveal systemic problems that result from the scope and complexity of the Section 702 surveillance program. Even the court that oversees FISA cases has noted violations.

But supporters of the law describe it as integral to intelligence and law enforcement efforts. Section 702 is set to expire and is up for reauthorization this year with an expected debate to come. And NSA plans to advocate hard for keeping it, Joyce said.

I can't do cybersecurity at the scope and scale we do it today without that authority, and so we'll be working hard with Congress, with the administration, with our partners at FBI and others, DOJ, to figure out how we get 702 reauthorized. It's really vital.

New privacy laws, as well as privacy provisions in cybersecurity laws, are complicating things as well. The standards advanced in the European Unions five-year-old General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, have presented some roadblocks for intelligence agencies.

There were second-order effects that we didn'tI won't say we didn't appreciate, because there were people sounding the alarm. They were not fully considered in the weight of that, Joyce said.

For example, it became more difficult to force internet registries to disclose who owns a domain name.

The default was you couldn't know that thing. And so cybersecurity researchers all over the world lost the ability to follow connectivity between banned domains. So we've got to think about second-order reflections, Joyce said. There is a need for data privacy, but we've got to have rational connectivity to the rule of law processes that still makes cybersecurity effective.

TikTok and ChatGPT: our friendly AI overlords?

Joyce said the concern with TikTok isnt potentially exposing personal data of a subset of individuals but the possibility that the Chinese government could access every bit of metadata the platform gathers.

Do I think if I loaded TikTok on my phone, they're going to get to all the other sensitive things through that TikTok app tomorrow? Probably not. The cost of exposing to TikTok in that way to exploit one or a small set of users probably isn't worth it. But all the data, the metadata, that they do collect, that goes back to big servers, accessible to Chinathat's a problem, Joyce said.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who faced intense questioning from Congress last month, pledged that the app would remove U.S. users non-public data to servers that can only be accessed by U.S.-based employees. But the NSA cyber director said, echoing lawmakers' concerns, that even the algorithms pose a threat.

The idea that they own the algorithms that promote or suppress the content. That's a huge problem when you have millions upon millions of eyes consuming the content, and they can dial up something that is divisive, or they can dial down something that is threatening to the PRC. That's the advantage, he said.

ChatGPT, which holds some promise to improve daily operations in the Pentagon, also poses concern to cybersecurity, particularly when it comes to crafting more sophisticated phishing messages.

The technology's impressive. It is really sophisticated, Joyce said. Is it going to, in the next year, automate all of the attacks on organizations? Can you give it a piece of software and tell it to find all the zero-day exploits for it? No, but what it will do is it's going to optimize the workflow. It's going to really improve the ability for malicious actors who use those tools to be better or faster.

That includes phishing or fraud messages that read more like native English-language speakers.

And in the case of the malicious foreign actors, it will craft very believable native-language English text, that could be part of your phishing campaign or your interaction with a person or your ability to build a backstoryall the things that will allow you to do those activities or even malign influencethat's going to be a problem, Joyce said.

AI will also help certain hackers reach a new level, he said.

Is it going to replace hackers and be this super AI hacking? Certainly not in the near term, but it will make the hackers that use AI much more effective and they will operate better than those who don't, he said.

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NSA Pushes Eavesdropping Law, Hits TikTok, Braces for AI-Boosted Attacks - Defense One