This document provides an explainer to a new report from Citizen Lab and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law on the use and human rights implications of algorithmic policing practices in Canada.
Findings from this study underscore that online and offline threats should not be viewed as separate phenomena, but rather as overlapping and mutually reinforcing.
Titled Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, the five lectures will be delivered online, streamed on CBC Radio’s IDEAS, and published as a book by House of Anansi Press in September.
The encroachments to OTF highlight why independent and transparent funding sources for research and development on Internet freedom are so important. Providing this type of support within a large government organisation can be difficult. OTF was an example of how to do that right. Losing that example will be a loss not only to the practitioners and researchers that have grown through the support of OTF but the wider community of marginalized people they support.
Targets were sent emails disguised as important communications, such as official summonses, bearing links to malicious software disguised as important documents. If opened, targets’ computers would have been infected with NetWire, a piece of commodity malware.
On May 7 2020, the Citizen Lab published a report that documents how WeChat (the most popular social app in China) conducts surveillance of images and files shared on the platform and uses the monitored content to train censorship algorithms. This document provides a summary of the research findings and questions and answers from the research team.
In what follows, I first provide a summary of the Citizen Lab’s recent investigation into the security of Zoom’s video conferencing application, and the company’s responses. I then discuss a broader range of digital security risks that are relevant to the work-from-home routines that MPs and their staff are following. Finally, I conclude with six recommendations.
Since publishing report on Zoom security issues, there have been a wide range of responses to our research from the media, public, and Zoom itself. This document provides answers to frequently asked questions and addresses some inaccurate framings of our research.