Access My Info (AMI), a web tool used to submit disclosure requests to telecommunications providers on the data they collect and share with third parties about their customers, launched in Hong Kong.

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.

April 27 – Boston, Massachusetts

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.”

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.”

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.

March 30-April 1 – San Francisco, California

In an interview with Scientific American, Citizen Lab Senior Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire explained the techniques and associated challenges in identifying the perpetrators of malware attacks.