Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert, Senior Fellow Rafal Rohozinski and Research Manager Masashi Crete-Nishihata have published an article in the February 2012 issue of Security Dialogue titled Cyclones in cyberspace: Information shaping and denial in the 2008 Russia–Georgia war.

In response to the open call of the newly-established United Nations Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises for input regarding the Working Group’s key thematic priorities and activities, the Citizen Lab submitted its views on the urgent need for greater assessment of and guidance surrounding the surveillance and Internet filtering technology sector.

Additional evidence gathered by the Citizen Lab from Burma since the publication of Behind Blue Coat has provided further confirmation that Blue Coat’s devices are presently in use in the country.

A new report, entitled The Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada, continues Citizen Lab research into the intersection of the private sector, authoritarianism, and cyberspace regulation, turning our attention to a component of the Internet that does not typically receive the same amount of attention as filtering, surveillance, and computer network attack products and services: web hosting services.

In this article Professor Ron Deibert discusses the active contestation of cyberspace and the need to protect the cyber commons. He calls on liberal democratic governments to form “a common domestic and foreign policy strategy that creates structural conditions to protect and preserve cyberspace as a secure, decentralized, and open commons”.

This article originally appeared in The 2011 G8 Deauville Summit: New World, New Ideas published by the G20 Research Group.