The Capitol uprising of January 6, 2021 led to intensified discussions regarding the rise of disinformation. John Scott-Railton, Ron Deibert, and Gabrielle Lim comment on the Citizen Lab’s mission to track technological threats against civil society.

On April 22, the Citizen Lab published recommendations for Bill C-11, proposed updates to Canadian federal commercial privacy legislation. In this explainer, we discuss those recommendations with Christopher Parsons, the post’s lead author.

Given our experiences, we have specific recommendations for how any federal commercial privacy legislation must be amended to better protect individuals from the predations and power of private organizations. In making our recommendations we have chosen to focus almost exclusively on the Openness and Transparency, Access to and Amendment of Personal Information, and Whistleblower sections of Bill C-11.

Citizen Lab founder and director, Ron Deibert, has been honoured as a Distinguished Scholar by the International Studies Association (ISA). Delivered every two years, the award honours “exceptional scholarship accomplishments and contributions to the development of the study of International Relations in Canada.”

On March 22, 2021, Citizen Lab research associate Christopher Parsons appeared before the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations to testify about issues of national security, governance, and trust with regards to Chinese companies and their technical products and services.

The Citizen Lab’s response to the questionnaire of the U.N. Working Group on the use of mercenaries on the provision of military and security products and services in cyber space by cyber mercenaries and related actors and its human rights impact.

Ron Deibert joins TVO’s the Agenda to discuss his latest book, RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society.

Citizen Lab researcher, Noura Al-Jizawi, reflects on her years as a leader fighting for democratic liberation in Syria. “Speaking about democracy is a bit easy. But working towards making democracy real is a really hard job,” she says.

Since 2016, the Citizen Lab has published numerous reports regarding the use of Pegasus spyware against human rights defenders, journalists, politicians, and other members of civil society. Despite these findings, NSO Group has failed to substantively engage or respond to the research presented by the Citizen Lab and other organizations. 

In their reporting on how China handled the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Times cites Citizen Lab research that outlines information controls on Chinese social media during the outbreak.