Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert is giving a talk titled “After Snowden: What Now for an Open and Free Internet?” at the Forty Minute Forum on 9 February from 10am to 11am.
A recent stream of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has shed light on an otherwise highly secretive world of cyber surveillance. Among the troubling elements of those disclosures: that the US NSA has collected in bulk the records of domestic US communications, possibly in violation of the 4th and 5th Amendments; that major brand-named Internet service providers, telecommunication companies, and social media giants colluded in secret and under a gag order with the NSA to provide access to customer data; and, that the NSA cracked, covertly shaped and deliberately weakened encryption and encryption standards worldwide which users rely on for secure communications. Against the backdrop of these revelations, questions have been raised about the involvement of Canada’s own highly secretive intelligence agency, CSEC, with these and other programs like them — questions which so far remain unanswered.
Deibert will explain why these revelations are likely to make matters worse, rather than better — at least in the short term — for a free, open and secure Internet.
See the YouTube channel for a video of the talk.