Citizen Lab staff and research in the news.
The United States Department of Homeland Security has filed a proposal to collect social media details from visitors to the country. Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons commented on the privacy implications of the proposal, as well as broader trends in social media monitoring by security officials.
Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons reviewed documents on BlackBerry for the CBC, and was interviewed by VICE on Canada’s RCMP’s use of IMSI catchers.
Recent reports have indicated that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has had a key to unlock encrypted messages sent between BlackBerry users since 2010. Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons commented on the significance of the revelations in an interview with VICE Motherboard.
Court documents provided in a case before the Quebec Court of Appeal indicate that the RCMP used advanced technology to spy on mobile phones in a criminal investigation on organized crime. Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons spoke to the Globe and Mail about the case.
The Washington Post (WP) cited Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert’s article in the Journal of Democracy, entitled “Cyberspace Under Siege.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced that the company would battle a court order requiring it to turn over information stored on an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters to the FBI. Christopher Parsons and Morgan Marquis-Boire outline the possibility that the creation of a backdoor would be used as a precedent for future cases.
Citizen Lab Research Fellow and Executive Director of OpenEffect Andrew Hilts was interviewed by Fox8 News Cleveland regarding privacy concerns with popular fitness trackers, including Apple, Fitbit, and Basis. The findings were detailed in the report “Every Step You Fake: A Comparative Analysis of Fitness Tracker Privacy and Security.”
In an interview with Scientific American, Citizen Lab Senior Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire explained the techniques and associated challenges in identifying the perpetrators of malware attacks.
In a guest post on JustSecurity co-authored with Tamir Israel of the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons urged a revaluation of Canada’s intelligence sharing with its Five Eyes allies.
Citizen Lab Senior Research Fellow Bill Marczak spoke to ABC Australia regarding the proxy server for the remote intrusion software FinFisher found in Sydney, Australia.
