On March 27-28 2011 the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the  Munk School of Global Affairs and the SecDev Group (Ottawa) convened a  public forum entitled Securing the Cyber Commons: a Global Dialogue .

This video presents highlights of the two day event. A full video of  the opening plenary and panel will be made available soon. For  information on the upcoming 2012 Dialogue and future sponsorship opportunities   please contact: [email protected]

Dr. Rafal Rohozinski, Senior Scholar at the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab, will be testifying before United States Congress on Friday July 15th, 2011 on Internet Freedom in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

For further details see here

In light of the controversy around the use of Canadian-made software being used in the Middle East and North Africa, it is remarkable that the Ontario Centres of Excellence, the Information Technology Association of Canada, and the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs would choose to honour an Internet Service Provider that pervasively filters access to information using Canadian made software.

See the OpenNet Initiative post here

Recent attacks on three U.S. defense contractors could be tied to cyberespionage campaigns waged from China, several security experts told CNET.

“The reality is, part of the basis of U.S. hegemony…has been the ability to leverage command of signals intelligence to have perspective on the motivations and activities of others. Cyberspace has equalized that, so all of a sudden we’re in a competitive intelligence environment,” said Rafal Rohozinski, a principal at SecDev who did research on targeted attacks on Tibet and others with supposed links to China. Those attacks were detailed in a “GhostNet” report in 2009.

“China has made no secret that they see cyberspace as the domain that allows them to compete with the U.S.,” Rohozinski said.

For full original article, see here

On CBC Dispatches, Rick MacInnes-Rae interviews Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, about the way governments in the Middle East are using the internet to fight back against their opponents – and Canada’s role too.

Click here for interview.

On March 25 Professor Ron Deibert will deliver the keynote for Mesh 2011 Canada’s Web conference. He will discuss state control and surveillance of the internet, and how citizens are responding.

For full details see the Mesh 2011 website

In this article Professor Ron Deibert discusses the active contestation of cyberspace and the need to protect the cyber commons. He calls on liberal democratic governments to form “a common domestic and foreign policy strategy that creates structural conditions to protect and preserve cyberspace as a secure, decentralized, and open commons”.

This article originally appeared in The 2011 G8 Deauville Summit: New World, New Ideas published by the G20 Research Group.

The St. Gallen Symposium is the world’s leading platform for dialogue on key issues in management, the entrepreneurial environment and the interfaces between business, politics and civil society.

This video presents Rafal Rohozinski and Rex Hughes’ panel on cybercrime, as well as a video of an interview with Dr. Hughes entitled “Cybersecurity: A Business with Fear” at the 41st St. Gallen Symposium.

Today the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs announced Jonathon Penney as its 2011 Google Policy Fellow. Jon is currently a pursuing a doctorate in information and communication sciences at Oxford University.

Before Oxford, Jonathon spent time studying and researching at Columbia Law School, where he was a Fulbright Scholar, and at Victoria University , where he was a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in the law faculty. A graduate of Dalhousie University and native Nova Scotian, he has served as Associate Editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal, and worked as a lawyer and as a policy adviser at the federal level.

Welcome Jon!

Full details can be found here.

World Press Freedom Day, Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom
13th CCWPF Press Freedom Award

Acceptance speech on behalf of the Citizen Lab
Rafal Rohozinski, senior scholar
National Arts Center, Ottawa, Canada.
3 May 2011

Excellency, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

It is truly an honour and a humbling moment to accept this award on behalf of the Citizen Lab.

Just under 10 years ago, Ronald Deibert founded the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Following in the footsteps of other great Canadian media theorists — Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan — Ron recognized that the impact of technology lay in the social domain. With the help and support of Janice Stein, he created a unique space — a hothouse of sorts — where engineers, mathematicians, social scientists, and economists could treat cyberspace as a giant petri dish and examine its various transformative social and technical trajectories.