News
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.
A new report from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab identifies security and privacy issues in QQ Browser, a mobile browser produced by China-based Internet giant Tencent, which may put many millions of users of the application at risk of serious compromise.
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.”
Privacy International (PI) latest report, entitled “The President’s Men?,” explores the role of Egypt’s Technical Research Department (TRD), a secret unit in the country’s intelligence infrastructure. In the report, PI cite Citizen Lab research on FinFisher and Hacking Team.
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.”
A new report from the Citizen Lab reveals that Baidu Browser, a popular mobile browser based in China and used by millions of people, has numerous privacy and security issues that could put users’ communications at risk.
Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert hosted a Q&A session with Ben Wizner, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and attorney for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The event followed the screening of the CITIZENFOUR film.
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.