Jul 1, 2018·2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData)
Olivia Choudhury, Nolan Rudolph, Issa Sylla, Noor Fairoza · 5 authors
Smart contracts are essential in implementing and automating transactions in a blockchain network. The translation of existing business rules on transactions to a smart contract is challenging and time consuming. These types of constraints are often re-used among different contracts in a given application area. Automatic generation of smart contracts can reduce the level of expertise required for, along with the time and cost incurred in, specifying them. In this paper, we provide a novel framework for auto-generating smart contracts by enabling seamless translation of constraints encoded in a knowledge representation to blockchain requirements. Our framework uses ontologies and semantic rules to encode domain-specific knowledge and then leverages the structure of abstract syntax trees to incorporate the required constraints. We successfully demonstrate the functionality and effectiveness of our method in two different applications: translating eligibility criteria for clinical trials and car rentals.
Jan 1, 2018·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
The concept of blockchain technology has gained significant momentum in practice and research in the past few years, as it provides an effective way for addressing the issues of anonymity and traceability in distributed scenarios with multiple parties, which have to exchange information and want to securely collaborate with each other. However, up-to-date, the impact of the structure and setup of business networks on successfully applying blockchain technology, remains largely unexplored. We propose a model-driven approach, combining an ontology and a layer model, that is capable of capturing the properties of existing blockchain-driven business networks. The layers are used to facilitate the comprehensive description of such networks. We also introduce the Blockchain Business Network Ontology (BBO), formalizing the concepts and properties for describing the integral parts of a blockchain network. We show the practical applicability of our work by evaluating and applying it to an available blockchain use case.
We study the problem of argument systems, where a computationally weak verifier outsources the execution of a computation to a powerful but untrusted prover, while being able to validate that the result was computed correctly through a proof generated by the prover. In addition, the zero-knowledge property guarantees that proof leaks no information about the potential secret input from the prover. Existing efficient zero-knowledge arguments with sublinear verification time require an expensive preprocessing phase that depends on a particular computation, and incur big overhead on the prover time and prover memory consumption. This thesis proposes new constructions for zero-knowledge arguments that overcome the above problems. The new constructions require only a one time preprocessing and can be used to validate any computations later. They also reduce the overhead on the prover time and memory by orders of magnitude. We apply our new constructions to build a verifiable database system and verifiable RAM programs, leading to significant improvements over prior work.
Bitcoin is one of the first decentralized, peer to peer, payment systems based on the so-called Proof-of-Work (PoW). PoW is an algorithm that requires the computation of a hard function in order to gain access to a resource but, at the same time, the correctness of the computed result should be easily checked. The use of a PoW removes the necessity of a centralized third party and so the consistency of the network may be altered directly by the involved users. Peers, to solve the PoW more efficiently, usually organize themselves into mining pools, to increase the overall computational power: this situation, unfortunately, leads to a network centralization. In this paper we consider two typical scenarios of a Bitcoin network and we model them by probabilistic logic programming (PLP): the centralization of the hashing power by large pools and the “double spending attack”. In the first one, we verify the effectiveness of a protocol that attempts to discourage the formation of large pools. In the second one, we compute the probability of success of an attacker. Both scenarios are modeled using the PLP package cplint.
Jan 1, 2018·Proceedings of the ... Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences/Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
Blockchains permit to store information in a tamper-resistant and irrevocable manner by reverting to distributed computing and cryptographic technologies. The primary purpose is to keep track of the ownership of tangible and intangible assets. In the paper at hand we apply these concepts and technologies to the domain of knowledge management. Based on the explication of knowledge in the form of enterprise models this permits the application of so-called knowledge proofs for a. enabling the transparent monitoring of knowledge evolution, b. tracking the provenance, ownership, and relationships of knowledge in an organization, c. establishing delegation schemes for knowledge management, and d. ensuring the existence of patterns in models via zero-knowledge proofs. To validate the technical feasibility of the approach a first technical implementation is described and applied to a fictitious use case.
At the beginning of 2018, there is a growing belief that blockchain technologies constitute a revolutionary innovation in how we transfer value electronically. In that vein, blockchain may be a suitable complement to ontologies to achieve a big part of the vision of the semantic Web by Tim Berners-Lee. We believe that if this complementarity is to be achieved blockchain and ontologies must co-evolve. In this paper, we focus on what and how to engineer models, methods, designs, and implementations for this co-evolution. As a first step in this co-evolution, we propose a conceptual design of a governance ontology represented as meta-data tags to be embedded and instantiated in a smart contract at the blockchain protocol level. We develop this design by examining and analyzing smart contracts from the infamous The DAO experiment on the Ethereum blockchain. We believe there are two contributions of this paper: it serves to inform and implore the blockchain and ontology communities to recognize and collaborate with each other; and it outlines a roadmap for engineering artifacts to bridge the gap between blockchain community focus on protocol-level blockchain interoperability and the ontology community focus on semantic-level interoperability.
Distributed ledger platforms based on blockchains provide a fully distributed form of data storage which can guarantee data integrity. Certain use cases, such as medical applications, can benefit from guarantees that the results of arbitrary queries against a Linked Dataset faithfully represent its contents as originally published, without tampering or data corruption. We describe potential approaches to the storage and querying of Linked Data with varying degrees of decentralisation and guarantees of integrity, using distributed ledgers, and discuss their a priori differences in performance, storage limitations and reliability, setting out a programme for future empirical research.
In recent years, the concept of Zero Knowledge Protocols (ZKP) as a useful approach to nuclear warhead verification has become increasingly popular. Several implementations of ZKP have been proposed, driving technology development toward proof of concept demonstrations. Whereas proposed implementations seem to fall within the general class of template-based techniques, all physical implementations of ZKPs proposed to date have a complication: once the instrumentation is prepared, it is no longer authenticatable; the instrument physically contains sensitive information. In this work we explore three different concepts that may offer more authenticatable and practical ZKP implementations and evaluate the sensitive information that may be at risk when doing so: sharing a subset of detector counts in a preloaded image (with spatial information removed), real-time image subtraction, and a new concept, CONfirmation using a Fast-neutron Imaging Detector with Anti-image NULL-positive Time Encoding (CONFIDANTE). CONFIDANTE promises to offer an almost ideal implementation of ZKP: a positive result is indicated by a constant rate at all times enabling the monitoring party the possibility of full access to the instrument before, during, and after confirmation. A prototype of CONFIDANTE was designed, built, and its performance evaluated in a series of measurements of several objects including a set of plutonium dioxide Hemispheres. Very encouraging results proving feasibility are presented. 1 Rebecca is currently a graduate student in Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley
All human interaction can be depicted as exchanges. We exchange trivial information, feelings, assets and more. Valuable exchanges have one thing in common; they all require some degree of trust. In today’s society we rely on institutionalized trust when commencing an exchange of value. Typically, this role is filled by a vast ecosystem consisting of commercial banks, clearinghouses and other third parties. The recent rise of Bitcoin, Ethereum and consequent attention on the underlying technology, blockchain, questions the future of current ecosystem. This report aims at uncovering what blockchain is, what different implementations are currently available and how it would affect today’s ecosystem. It does so through semistructured interviews with actors within the current ecosystem as well as weighing in the views of blockchain evangelists. It highlights five key aspects that are crucial when implementing blockchain technology within the existing banking paradigm. Today’s organized societies require law and order which, to a large extent, is limited within the realm of public blockchain technology. With the insight of society’s infrastructural limitations, this paper argue that the current transaction system of our society favors a permissioned implementation with trusted nodes. Such a system would result in more efficient financial markets and lower costs of transacting. However, this paper acknowledge the virtues and reasons behind the rise of public blockchains. Given recent developments within the field and interesting concepts, the report does not dare to exclude a future of banking relying on public blockchain technology as the underlying database.
Hubert Ritzdorf, Karl Wüst, Arthur Gervais, Guillaume Felley · 5 authors
An internet user wanting to share observed content is typically restricted to primitive techniques such as screenshots, web caches or share button-like solutions. These acclaimed proofs, however, are either trivial to falsify or require trust in centralized entities (e.g., search engine caches). This motivates the need for a seamless and standardized internet-wide non-repudiation mechanism, allowing users to share data from news sources, social websites or financial data feeds in a provably secure manner. Additionally, blockchain oracles that enable data-rich smart contracts typically rely on a trusted third party (e.g., TLSNotary or Intel SGX). A decentralized method to transfer web-based content into a permissionless blockchain without additional trusted third party would allow for smart contract applications to flourish. In this work, we present TLS-N, the first TLS extension that provides secure non-repudiation and solves both of the mentioned challenges. TLS-N generates non-interactive proofs about the content of a TLS session that can be efficiently verified by third parties and blockchain based smart contracts. As such, TLS-N increases the accountability for content provided on the web and enables a practical and decentralized blockchain oracle for web content. TLS-N is compatible with TLS 1.3 and adds a minor overhead to a typical TLS session. When a proof is generated, parts of the TLS session (e.g., passwords, cookies) can be hidden for privacy reasons, while the remaining content can be verified.
Christopher Munro, Philip Couch, Jon Johnson, John Ainsworth · 5 authors
Discovery of useful relationships between scholarly assets on the web is challenging, both in terms generating the right metadata around the assets, and in connecting all relevant digital entities in chain of provenance accessible to the whole community. This paper reports the development of a framework and tools enabling scholarly asset relationships to be expressed in a standard and open way, illustrated with use-cases of discovering new knowledge across cohort studies. The framework uses Research Objects for aggregation, distributed databases for storage, and distributed ledgers for provenance. Our proposal avoids management by a single central platform or organization, instead leveraging the use of existing resources and platforms across natural partnerships. Our proposed infrastructure will support a wide range of users from system administrators to researchers.
Searching for information in distributed ledgers is currently not an easy task, as information relating to an entity may be scattered throughout the ledger with no index. As distributed ledger technologies become more established, they will increasingly be used to represent real world transactions involving many parties and the search requirements will grow. An index providing the ability to search using domain specific terms across multiple ledgers will greatly enhance to power, usability and scope of these systems.
Eli Ben‐Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes, Ariel Gabizon · 6 authors
We study the problem of constructing proof systems that achieve both soundness and zero knowledge unconditionally (without relying on intractability assumptions). Known techniques for this goal are primarily combinatorial, despite the fact that constructions of interactive proofs (IPs) and probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs) heavily rely on algebraic techniques to achieve their properties.
Eli Ben‐Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Ariel Gabizon, Madars Virza
The seminal result that every language having an interactive proof also has a zero-knowledge interactive proof assumes the existence of one-way functions. Ostrovsky and Wigderson (ISTCS 1993) proved that this assumption is necessary: if one-way functions do not exist, then only languages in BPP have zero-knowledge interactive proofs. Ben-Or et al. (STOC 1988) proved that, nevertheless, every language having a multi-prover interactive proof also has a zero-knowledge multi-prover interactive proof, unconditionally. Their work led to, among many other things, a line of work studying zero knowledge without intractability assumptions. In this line of work, Kilian, Petrank, and Tardos (STOC 1997) defined and constructed zero-knowledge probabilistically checkable proofs (PCPs). While PCPs with quasilinear-size proof length, but without zero knowledge, are known, no such result is known for zero knowledge PCPs. In this work, we show how to construct “2-round” PCPs that are zero knowledge and of length ~ O(K) where K is the number of queries made by a malicious polynomial time verifier. Previous solutions required PCPs of length at leastK 6 to maintain zero knowledge. In this model, which we call duplex PCP (DPCP), the verifier first receives an oracle string from the prover, then replies with a message, and then receives another oracle string from the prover; a malicious verifier can make up toK queries in total to both oracles. Deviating from previous works, our constructions do not invoke the PCP Theorem as a blackbox but instead rely on certain algebraic properties of a specific family of PCPs. We show that if the PCP has a certain linear algebraic structure — which many central constructions can be shown to possess, including [BFLS91,ALMSS98,BS08] — we can add the zero knowledge property at virtually no cost (up to additive lower order terms) while introducing only minor modifications in the algorithms of the prover and verifier. We believe that our linear-algebraic characterization of PCPs may be of independent interest, as it gives a simplified way to view previous well-studied PCP constructions.
Meaningfully automating sociotechnical business collaboration promises efficiency-, effectiveness-, and quality increases for realizing next-generation decentralized autonomous organizations. For automating business-process aware cross-organizational operations, the development of existing choreography languages is technology driven and focuses less on sociotechnical suitability and expressiveness concepts and properties that recognize the interaction between people in organizations and technology in workplaces. This gap our suitability- and expressiveness exploration fills by means of a cross-organizational collaboration ontology that we map as a proof-of-concept evaluation to the eSourcing Markup Language (eSML). The latter we test in a feasibility case study to meaningfully support the automation of business collaboration. The developed eSourcing ontology and eSML is replicable for exploring strengths and weaknesses of other choreography languages.
Web 3.0, the web of social and semantic cooperation, calls for a methodological multidisciplinary architecture in order to reach its mainstream objectives. With the lack of such an architecture and the reliance of existing efforts on lightweight semantics and RDF graphs, this thesis proposes "Web3.OWL", an ontology-driven framework towards a Web 3.0 knowledge architecture. \nMeanwhile, the online social parenting data and their corresponding websites users known as "mommy bloggers" undergo one of the fastest online demographics growth, \nand the available literature reflects the very little attention this growth has so far been given and the various deficiencies the parenting domain suffers from; these deficiencies all fall under the umbrella of the scarcity of parenting sociomedical analysis and decision-support systems. \nThe Web3.OWL framework puts forward an approach that relies on the Meta-Object Facility for Semantics standard (SMOF) for the management of its modeled OWL (Web Ontology Language) expressive domain ontologies on the one hand, and the coordination of its various underlined Web 3.0 prerequisite disciplines on the other. \nSetting off with a holistic portrayal of Web3.OWL’s components and workflow, the thesis progresses into a more analytic exploration of its main paradigms. Out of its \ndifferent ontology-aware paradigms are notably highlighted both its methodology for expressiveness handling through modularization and projection techniques and algorithms, \nand its facilities for tagging inference, suggestion and processing. \n \nWeb3.OWL, albeit generic by conception, proves its efficiency in solving the deficiencies and meeting the requirements of the sociomedical domain of interest. Its conceived ontology for parenting analysis and surveillance, baptised "ParOnt", strongly contributes to the backbone metamodel and the various constituents of this ontology-driven framework. \nAccordingly, as the workflow revolves around Description Logics principles, OWL 2 profiles along with standard and beyond-standard reasoning techniques, conducted experiments and competency questions are illustrated, thus establishing the required Web 3.0 outcomes. The empirical results of the diverse preliminary decision-support and recommendation services targeting parenting public awareness, orientation and education do ascertain, in conclusion, the value and potentials of the proposed conceptual framework.
Quality Control in Fact-Finding is, above all else, a very welcome addition to the literature on international fact-finding. Whilst there has been a marked increase in the number of fact-finding inquiries established in the last couple of decades,1 this has not been matched by a similar increase in the number of scholarly studies of such inquiries.2 In light of both the number and high-profile nature of such inquiries, the absence of scholarship focusing squarely on the contemporary role of inquiries up to the present day seems like an oversight. This collection, published in open access format by Florence-based, not-for-profit ‘academic EPublisher’ Torkel Opsahl (named after the late Professor Opsahl who himself briefly chaired the Commission of Experts for the Former Yugoslavia until his untimely death in 1993), attempts to address this lack of academic attention. The collection ostensibly sets out to ‘make a contribution to the emerging discourse on fact-finding mechanisms’ by ‘focusing specifically on quality awareness and quality improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work’ (at viii). Its accessible style, open access format, and the breadth of topics covered will attract the attention not only of international legal scholars, but practitioners and policy-makers too. In the opening chapter Marina Aksenova and Morten Bergsmo provide a helpful overview of the concept of international fact-finding itself and of the fact-finding missions established in recent decades. The authors define the concept of fact-finding broadly as a method of ascertaining facts used in international relations for differing purposes (at 2), before noting that traditionally there are three main purposes for establishing facts in international law. The first is the narrow purpose of fact-finding ‘in cases where differences of opinion on factual matters underlie a dispute between parties’, for which a procedure of inquiry was set out in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, and which has fallen into desuetude.3 The second purpose is that of supervising the execution of international agreements typically carried out by the UN Specialized Agencies, and the third purpose is fact-finding for the purposes of Article 34 of the UN Charter, namely the power of the Security Council to investigate any situation or dispute that may endanger international peace and security. The overview of fact-finding missions established by principal UN organs, subsidiary organs, national governments, and various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), helpfully set out in the form of a table in the opening chapter, provides a valuable introduction to the subject. Commentators in the past have lamented the lack of a standard operating procedure for fact-finding missions.4 However, a recurring theme of this collection is caution against standardization in light of the inherently context-specific nature of international fact-finding inquiries. Richard Goldstone states that ‘[i]t is folly to generalise about fact-finding missions. Each situation will have its unique features. What works with regard to one may well fail if applied to another’ (at 52). Similarly, Martin Scheinin argues in favour of the maintenance of clear functional distinctions between inquiries, in particular asserting that the ‘various mechanisms of mainstream human rights bodies that seek to establish state responsibility for human rights violations should not be subjected to the evidence requirements typical for determining individual criminal accountability’ (at 54). Particularly insightful contributions to the collection are those in which the authors are able to draw on their own practical experience, such as the chapters by Goldstone, Scheinin, Chris Mahony, and David Re. Goldstone’s contribution provides a potentially crucial insight into the mind of a man who has been heavily involved in a number of landmark fact-finding missions, both domestic and international. Much of Goldstone’s account focuses on two domestic inquiries that he led in South Africa, namely the Sithole Inquiry into the death of a member of the ANC in detention shortly before the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in February 1990, and the Sebokeng Inquiry into the action of police during a mass protest-match in March 1990. The relevance of the discussion of these domestic inquiries to a collection on international fact-finding is perhaps not immediately apparent; however Goldstone’s vast experience allows him to make a number of broad proposals for improving the quality of future international fact-finding missions. Amongst them the lessons learned from the Sithole Inquiry in which the transparent nature of the inquiry (which was held in a Johannesburg City Hall instead of a courtroom with no visible security and large public galleries) created a more ‘public-friendly’ atmosphere and insulated it from political interference, and the proposals for opening the appointment process for members of commissions to public scrutiny, are amongst the most helpful and practical proposals. Goldstone’s contribution is also instructive regarding his involvement in the UN Human Rights Council’s Gaza inquiry in 2009, as it illuminates the political machinations ‘behind the scenes’ that led to the formation of the inquiry and possibly is indicative of the political process that has led to the establishment of other commissions of inquiry. Similarly interesting is the issue of consent and cooperation – the refusal of Israel to cooperate with the inquiry clearly impeded the Commission’s operation and was apparently the cause of many of the ‘sleepless nights’ that Goldstone subsequently suffered (at 50). The lack of cooperation, coupled with new facts subsequently coming to light, put Goldstone in the position where he felt he had to row back on some of the inquiry’s factual findings in a Washington Post opinion-editorial. This episode cautions against reliance on any findings-of-fact derived from an inquiry with restricted access to the area investigated, and a resultant need to rely to a much greater extent on secondary sources and press reports. The critical remarks of Wu Xiaodan that Goldstone’s change of heart and the furore surrounding Professor Christine Chinkin’s alleged bias had cast some doubt on the credibility and impartiality of the Goldstone Report provide a useful counterpoint to Goldstone’s chapter (at 201) although an even more robust critique was perhaps warranted. Similarly, Scheinin draws on decades of practical experience in his contribution dealing with fact-finding in the context of treaty-based human rights mechanisms and the Special Procedures of the UN Human Rights Council. Scheinin’s contribution provides a helpful typology of the fact-finding apparatus and organizational structure of treaty-based fact-finding mechanisms, including the reporting procedure, individual complaints, and inquiries. Perhaps the most useful part of this contribution is the section dealing with Special Procedures in which the thoughts of an experienced practitioner are key, given the nature of the topic that would otherwise be largely impenetrable to most. For instance, the contribution explores the two fact-finding functions of Special Rapporteurs, namely communications (letters) to governments and country visits. Scheinin is critical of the communications function, noting that the response rate to letters is low and the information gained from communications is such that they cannot be considered a fact-finding mechanism at all. However, Scheinin is able to draw on his own experience as Special Rapporteur, having paid visits to states such as Turkey and Tunisia, and is positive about governmental compliance with requests made by Special Rapporteurs, access to areas under investigation, and ultimately even the uncovering of facts that could later be used for a number of purposes including criminal prosecution. Among the most important contributions to the collection is that of Mahony dealing with the security implications for witnesses appearing before fact-finding commissions. This extended, detailed, contribution draws on the author’s own experience in Nepal, and both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court in Sierra Leone. Whilst having a relatively narrow focus on a small number of situations, the author’s own first-hand experience and the level of detail and practical examples provided allow important conclusions to be drawn regarding means of ensuring the safety of witnesses, including details of the legal regime needed for witness protection, consideration of the crucial issue of funding, and more practical issues such as personnel and the institutional location of the programme that could potentially be of use in the context of other commissions. David Re’s contribution is based on his involvement in the criminal courts in the Former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone and poses a fundamentally important question: what did the ICTY trial and appeals chamber actually do with UN and NGO fact-finding reports? Interestingly, Re shows that relatively minimal (at least explicit) use was made of such factual findings by the ICTY chambers between 1994 and 2013. Most often such findings were utilized as investigative leads for the prosecutor (at 296). Further, Re argues that the findings-of-fact made by such inquiries are likely to be more politically and historically important than judicially influential (at 280). The conclusions to be drawn from this argument are not fully fleshed out, but it is submitted that it is fundamentally important for the future of international fact-finding that they are considered. Tackling more theoretical issues, Simon De Smet’s contribution addresses the theoretical foundations of fact-finding. He takes as his starting point that most fact-finders approach the subject intuitively; ‘[e]ven though they may display great care and circumspection in making their findings, they do not necessarily have a strongly developed understanding of what the underlying principles and concepts of fact-finding are’ (at 74). De Smet provides a helpful introduction to the epistemology of fact-finding and evidence (at 80) and takes us through important theoretical issues such as the epistemology of how beliefs can be justified, including both probabilistic or Bayesian epistemology and so-called ‘inference to best explanation’ or relative plausibility theory. In doing so De Smet seeks to provide the basis for improving the overall epistemic quality of fact-finding, without making any claims that doing so would in actual fact improve the accuracy of fact-finding in practice. De Smet tackles a wide array of the goals he has set for himself with relish, although one gets the impression that there is simply not enough space to do justice to the substantial number of important issues ranging from philosophical conceptions of probability to the epistemology of testimony, trustworthiness, competence, and cognitive consensus, to name just a few. While the author’s forthcoming monograph will provide a more in-depth analysis,5 in the context of this collection, it might have been better to choose a smaller number of discrete issues and explore them in greater detail, but this is a minor quibble. Despite claiming to deal with non-criminal justice fact-finding (at viii) international criminal law inevitably finds its way into the collection through the contribution by Dov Jacobs and Catherine Harwood which considers the use of international criminal law (ICL) by fact-finding commissions. More specifically, the contribution assesses the creep of international criminal law concepts into the work of fact-finding missions and considers the utility of ICL in general ‘outside the courtroom’. The contribution highlights a number of concerns regarding the use of such concepts in fact-finding inquiries, including the problematic use of the criminal law burden and standard of proof in non-judicial situations which raise issues of due process. For instance, cursory legal determinations of complex situations and divergent legal determinations between different commissions of inquiry have caused controversy in recent times.6 The contribution ultimately concludes that not only does the use of ICL concepts not help to solve some of the operational problems that fact-finding inquiries face, it in effect creates a number of new problems (at 353). Whilst this contribution complements excellent existing work in this field,7 the topic of fact-finding in international criminal law remains one of the most under-researched areas of fact-finding and further research in this area, where the personal liberty of individuals is at stake, is undoubtedly needed. Other contributions address selected issues including quality control in the context of truth and reconciliation (Liu Daqun at Chapter 5), how commissions of inquiry can provide international prosecutors with the background information they need on specific international criminal law situations (Lyal S. Sunga at Chapter 13), fact-finding difficulties encountered by NGOs (Wolfgang Kaleck and CarolijnTerwindt at Chapter 14), and the role of information technology in the work of fact-finding commissions (Ilia Utmelidze at Chapter 16). In the penultimate chapter Charles Garraway provides a contribution on the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission established under Article 90 of the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which has never been used to date, but which could be of potential use in the future according to the author, although its competences are in some crucial respects limited in scope. Mention is made of these contributions in order to highlight the sheer breadth of the collection, which endeavours to cover so many discrete and diverse issues in relation to international fact-finding. Ultimately, Quality Control in Fact-Finding is a commendable attempt to address the paucity of literature in an area of international law that is seen as increasingly significant. Whilst a final concluding chapter drawing together some of the main themes and findings of the collection would have been welcome, it contains some genuinely useful contributions, in particular those in which the authors are able to draw on their own experience and those which attempt to systematize and make sense of the operation of international fact-finding. Marina Aksenova and Morten Bergsmo, Non-Criminal Justice Fact-Work in the Age of Accountability; Richard J. Goldstone, Quality Control in International Fact-Finding Outside Criminal Justice for Core International Crimes; Martin Scheinin, Improving Fact-Finding in Treaty-Based Human Rights Mechanisms and the Special Procedures of the United Nations Human Rights Council; Simon De Smet, Justified Belief in the Unbelievable; Liu Daqun, Quality Control in Truth and Reconciliation Processes; Fan Yuwen, Quality Control and the Mandate of International Fact-Finding; Isabelle Lassée, Coherence in the Design and Implementation of the Mandates of International Fact-Finding Commissions: Internal and External Dimensions; Wu Xiaodan, Quality Control and the Selection of Members of International Fact-Finding Mandates; Dan Saxon, Purpose and Legitimacy in International Fact-Finding Bodies; Chris Mahony, Witness Sensitive Practices in International Fact-Finding Outside Criminal Justice: Lessons for Nepal; David Re, Fact-Finding in the Former Yugoslavia: What the Courts Did; Dov Jacobs and Catherine Harwood, International Criminal Law Outside the Courtroom: The Impact of Focusing on International Crimes for the Quality of Fact-Finding; Lyal S. Sunga, Can International Criminal Investigators and Prosecutors Afford to Ignore Information from United Nations Human Rights Sources?; Wolfgang Kaleck and Carolijn Terwindt, Non-Governmental Organisation Fact-Work: Not Only a Technical Problem; Charles Garraway, Fact-Finding and the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission; Ilia Utmelidze, Information Technology and Quality Control in Non-Criminal Justice Fact-Work.
In this short paper, we present a Fiat-Shamir type transform that takes any Sigma protocol for a relation R and outputs a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof (not of knowledge) for the associated language L R , in the common reference string model. As in the Fiat-Shamir transform, we use a hash function H. However, zero-knowledge is achieved under standard assumptions in the common reference string model (without any random oracle), and soundness is achieved in the non-programmable random oracle model. The concrete computational complexity of the transform is only slightly higher than the original Fiat-Shamir transform.
A probabilistically Checkable Proof (PCP) allows a randomized verifier, with oracle access to a purported proof, to probabilistically verify an input statement of the form “x ∈ L” by querying only few bits of the proof. A PCP of proximity (PCPP) has the additional feature of allowing the verifier to query only few bits of the input x, where if the input is accepted then the verifier is guaranteed that (with high probability) the input is close to some x′ ∈ L.
Md Samsuzzaman, Mohamed Tahir Hj A Rahman, Mohammad Tariqul Islam, Rahman Rahman · 6 authors
Semantic web offers a smarter web service which synchronizes and arranges all the data over the web in a disciplined pattern. In data mining over the web, accuracy of selecting necessary data as user demand and pick them for output counts as a major key challenge from long ago. Our approach contributes a complete and automatic mapping of data over web3. 0 through ontology and accesses them by intelligent web agent. The agent offers all possible output related to user request, from which user could find desired information. When a user has insufficient data parameters to search, they can gain knowledge from the relational outputs provided by the agent and thus semantic web mining enables unknown knowledge acquisition or discovery. Here, in this paper we briefly illustrate and discuss the architecture of semantic web, then propose a model for web mining to discover knowledge under a framework of agent, and finally discusses the ways, how agent finds out user query related nodes from ontology.
Kyle Richardson, Danny Bobrow, Cleo Condoravdi, Richard Waldinger · 5 authors
We present work on using a domain model to guide text interpretation, in the context of a project that aims to interpret English questions as a sequence of queries to be answered from structured databases. We adapt a broad-coverage and ambiguity-enabled natural language processing (NLP) system to produce domain-specific logical forms, using knowledge of the domain to zero in on the appropriate interpretation. The vocabulary of the logical forms is drawn from a domain theory that constitutes a higher-level abstraction of the contents of a set of related databases. The meanings of the terms are encoded in an axiomatic domain theory. To retrieve information from the databases, the logical forms must be instantiated by values constructed from fields in the database. The axiomatic domain theory is interpreted by the first-order theorem prover SNARK to identify the groundings, and then retrieve the values through procedural attachments semantically linked to the database. SNARK attempts to prove the logical form as a theorem by reasoning over the theory that is linked to the database and returns the exemplars of the proof(s) back to the user as answers to the query. The focus of this paper is more on the language task, however, we discuss the interaction that must occur between linguistic analysis and reasoning for an end-to-end natural language interface to databases. We illustrate the process using examples drawn from an HIV treatment domain, where the underlying databases are records of temporally bound treatments of individual patients.
We present a stronger notion of zero-knowledge: precise concurrent zero-knowledge. Our notion captures the idea that the view of any verifier in concurrent interaction can be reconstructed in the almost same time (within a constant/polynomial factor). Precise zero-knowledge in stand-alone setting was introduced by Micali and Pass in STOC’06 (The original work used the term ”local zero-knowledge”.). Their notion shows that the view of any verifier can be reconstructed in the almost same time in stand-alone setting. Hence our notion is the generalization of their notion in concurrent setting. Furthermore, we propose a ω(log 2 n)-round concurrent zero-knowledge argument for NP with linear precision, which shows that the view of any verifier in concurrent interaction can be reconstructed by the simulator with linear-time overhead. Our argument is Feige-Lapidot-Shamir type which consists of a proof-preamble and a proof-body for a modified NP statement. Our result assumes the restriction of adversarial scheduling the communication that the concurrent interaction of preambles of all sessions will be scheduled before any proof-body by the adversarial verifier. 1