This call comes on the heels of recent Citizen Lab research which shows that Netsweeper, a Canadian company who has received funding from the Canadian government, is being used by governments to block access to content in ten authoritarian countries around the world, including LGBTQ2+ sites.

A new paper by the Citizen Lab investigates how Chinese censorship reaches independent developers and reveals that, while developers include censorship lists in open source projects, there is little apparent similarity in these blacklists, raising several questions about their origins.

Citizen Lab research showed that, at the time, WeChat seemed to use a relatively crude comparison between banned images and content uploaded to the site in order to decide what to block.

New Citizen Lab research reveals how China’s most popular app filters sensitive images and suggests techniques for evasion.

In a recent article for the Council on Foreign Relations, the Citizen Lab’s Lennart Maschmeyer discusses how repressive regimes are becoming increasingly effective at targeting opposition groups using digital espionage, both at home and abroad.

The Citizen Lab has sent an open letter to the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both Canada and Chile, as co-chairs of the Equal Rights Coalition (ERC), and Mr. Randy Boissonnault, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ2 Issues, flagging important issues for discussion at the upcoming ERC Global Conference on LGBTI Human Rights and Inclusive Development (August 5-7, 2018, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada).

The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Ms. Dubravka Šimonović, recently released her draft report to the Human Rights Council on online violence against women and girls from a human rights perspective. The Special Rapporteur’s report includes many key insights from the Citizen Lab’s formal response on this issue last fall and echoes many of our sixteen key recommendations.

Doctoral candidate Jennie Phillips recently published an article in International Development Planning Review. Based on work she conducted while at the Citizen Lab, “Risk in a digital age: understanding risk in virtual networks through digital response networks (DRNs)” explores risk understanding by investigating the inherent risk and resilience of DRNs.

Today, Director Ron Deibert on behalf of the Citizen Lab sent a letter to the National Energy Board (NEB) raising critical questions and concerns in response to the NEB issuing a Request for Information (RFI) about “security threat monitoring services”.

In Mexico, government-exclusive spyware technology is being used to target journalists, human rights defenders, anti-corruption advocates, and international investigators. Luis Fernando Garcia, Director of R3D, explains how technology meant to track terrorists is being turned against activists