Artificial Intelligence (AI) finds its way into impactful decision-making processes. We address the challenge of trustworthy AI implementation. How do computational, governance- elated and behavioral aspects impact the acceptance of AI by end users? The provisioning of VAT numbers by the tax administration serves as a prototype for our research.

The healthcare industry is under financial stress, faces increasing complexity of disease and co-morbidity, and is burdened by capacity constraints. Three major challenges have inhibited better use of health data: - data is not accessible and remains in silos; - data is not analysed to derive meaningful clinical insights; - insight isnt accessible for actioning by providers or patients to self/joint manage their condition. The EPI consortium aims to liberate, analyse, and action that data in a trustworthy way. This will empower patients and providers through self-management, shared management, and personalization across the full health spectrum.

This project proposes to build the 6th generation of the Distributed ASCI Supercomputer, DAS-6. The challenge of this project is to study the feasibility of a next generation trusted ecosystem to face the proliferation of many developments in Computer Science, such as streaming applications, edge and fog computing, in-network processing, and complex security and trust policies. The DAS-6 research ecosystem will consist of 6 clusters with different functionalities, integrated into a coherent shared distributed system that is designed to fit the current research agenda of numerous Computer Science groups. We have identified 67 funded research projects that will use DAS-6 once it is operational, especially in systems areas like trust, security, blockchains, scheduling, big data, Internet-of-Things, and accelerators and in application areas like artificial intelligence, deep learning, and eScience.

The goal of CATRIN is to start up the Responsible Internet, a novel security-by-design concept and extension to the Internet that enhances the range of actions users have at their disposal to share information securely and confidentially, thus enabling higher levels of trust and sovereignty. The Responsible Internet is a transformational undertaking: it fundamentally changes the way digital societies communicate because it allows users (e.g., providers of critical services or individuals) to request descriptions of the chains of network operators that handle their data flows, for instance in terms of their security and administrative properties and their interrelations (Transparency). Based on these details, users can request network operators to handle their data flows in a particular way, for example by allowing them to only pass through operators whose equipment and geolocations they have specified (Controllability). The Responsible Internet also allows users to verify whether operators act as they declared and to trace incidents and attacks to their root cause (Accountability). The Responsible Internet addresses the urgent problem of Digital Sovereignty, which is that governments, institutions, companies, and citizens around the world, and especially in Europe, are increasingly concerned about the foundations of their digital economies being operated or manufactured elsewhere, without users having any insight in, or control over how they depend on the underlying systems. This poses a risk to public values of security and trust, may hinder innovation, and stands in the way of societies developing their own digital distinctiveness. CATRIN integrates technology, economics, and public research to deliver two key outcomes: (1) a first operational multi-operator Responsible Internet based on the prototype technology developed in CATRIN and (2) an initial ecosystem of players around it (e.g., users and network operators), based on the incentive mechanisms, business models, and use cases that CATRIN develops and evaluates.

The goal of UPIN is to develop and evaluate a scalable distributed system that enables users to cryptographically verify and easily control the paths through which their data travels through an inter-domain network like the Internet, both in terms of router-to-router hops as well as in terms of router attributes (e.g., their location, operator, security level, and manufacturer). UPIN will thus provide the solution to a very relevant and current problem, namely that it is becoming increasingly opaque for users on the Internet who processes their data (e.g., in terms of service providers their data passes through as well as what jurisdictions apply) and that they have no control over how it is being routed. This is a risk for people’s privacy (e.g., a malicious network compromising a user’s data) as well as for their safety (e.g., an untrusted network disrupting a remote surgery). Motivating examples in which (sensitive) user data typically travels across the Internet without user awareness or control are: - Internet of Things for consumers: sensors such as sleep trackers and light switches that collect information about a user’s physical environment and send it across the Internet to remote services for analysis. - Medical records: health care providers requiring medical information (e.g., health records of patients or remote surgery telemetry) to travel between medical institutions according to specified agreements. - Intelligent transport systems: communication plays a crucial role in future autonomous transportation systems, for instance to avoid freight drones colliding or to ensure smooth passing of trucks through busy urban areas. The UPIN project is novel in three ways: 1. UPIN gives users the ability to control and verify the path that their data takes through the network all the way to the destination endpoint, both in terms of hops and attributes of routers traversed. UPIN accomplishes this by adding and improving remote attestation techniques for on-path routers to existing path verification mechanisms, and by adopting and further developing in-packet path selection directives for control. 2. We develop and simulate data and control plane protocols and router extensions to include the UPIN system in inter-domain networking systems such as IP (e.g., using BGP and segment routing) and emerging systems such as SCION and RINA. 3. We evaluate the scalability and performance of the UPIN system using a multi-site testbed of open programmable P4 routers, which is necessary because UPIN requires novel packet processing functions in the data plane. We validate the system using the earlier motivating examples as use cases. The impact we target is: - Increased trust from users (individuals and organizations) in network services because they are able to verify how their data travels through the network to the destination endpoint and because the UPIN APIs enable novel applications that use these network functions. - More empowered users because they are able to control how their data travels through inter-domain networks, which increases self-determination, both at the level of individual users as well as at the societal level.