We investigate the collection of mobility data by the federal government of Canada, its legality under the existing and proposed privacy regime, and proposed recommendations for the reform of draft Bill C-27 which would address many of the issues in the governance of mobility data.
This report offers 30 recommendations to the draft legislation in an effort to correct its secrecy and accountability deficiencies, while also suggesting amendments which would impose some restrictions on the range of powers that the government would be able to wield. It is important that these amendments are seriously taken up due to the sweeping nature of the legislation.
Mexican digital rights organization R3D, with technical support from the Citizen Lab, has determined that Mexican journalists and a human rights defender were infected with Pegasus between 2019 and 2021. The infections occurred years after the first revelations of Pegasus abuses in Mexico, and after Mexico’s current President assured the public that the government no longer used the spyware, and that there would be no further abuses.
We find that mass DNA collection in Tibet is another mass DNA collection campaign conducted under the Xi Jinping administration (2012–present), along with the mass DNA collection campaign in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and the police-led national program of male DNA collection.
The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto, focusing on research and development at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security. Learn more.
Key findings and recommendations from the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on the use and impact of facial recognitioon, along with some concerns.
Citizen Lab fellow Cynthia Khoo appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (ETHI) as a witness in the Committee’s study on the use and impact on facial recognition technology. She was invited to provide testimony on the potential harms and human rights implications of facial recognition, including recommendations for how the Government of Canada should regulate such technology.
We identified a network of 885 websites and attributed these websites with high confidence as having been used by the United States (US) Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for covert communication.
On August 9, 2022, Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert appeared before the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Access to information, privacy, and Ethics on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) use of spyware and advocating for stronger controls and oversight.
On July 27, 2022, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton spoke before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He was invited to provide expert testimony on a hearing devoted to combatting threats to U.S. national security from the proliferation of foreign commercial spyware.
On June 8, 2022, Citizen Lab fellow Lex Gill appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence to discuss S-7: An Act to Amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016. The following is an edited version of her opening comments.
We investigate how activists and dissidents living in Canada are impacted by digital transnational repression: the various ways that individuals continue to be harassed and targeted online by authoritarian governments, even after they leave their country of origin.
