The Globe and Mail: How Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered the hacking of Princess Haya
Citizen Lab fellow Bill Marczak comments on how he uncovered a Pegasus surveillance operation aimed at two lawyers and Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein.
In the Media
Citizen Lab staff and research in the news.
New York Times: Hong Kong Forces Tiananmen Vigil Group to Delete Online Presence
The Hong Kong police recently forced one of the city’s most prominent activist groups to delete its online presence, in a move some fear means that Hong Kong’s digital spaces will move to more closely resemble the mainland.
Democracy Now: NSO Group Spies Secretly Seized Control of Apple Devices by Exploiting Flaw in Code
Ron Deibert joined Democracy Now to discuss how Citizen Lab research of a zero-click zero-day exploit—used by NSO Group—led Apple to issue a patch to over 1.65 billion products.
Banned and blocked—LGBT+ websites censored from Russia to Indonesia (Openly)
Senior researcher, Irene Poetranto, discusses a joint report written by the Citizen Lab, OutRight Action International, and the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), focused on LGBTIQ website censorship and its impact on LGBTIQ communities.
Al Jazeera: How Vulnerable are We to Spying Technology?
Ron Deibert joins Al Jazeera to discuss the history of NSO Group’s Pegasus technology and why the expansive commercial spyware market deserves closer scrutiny and regulatory oversight.
The Tyee: RCMP Secret Facial Recognition Tool Looked for Matches with 700,000 ‘Terrorists’
British Columbia RCMP units secretly used a facial recognition tool that allegedly helps identify terrorists. The tool, provided by U.S.-based IntelCenter, scans images scraped from the Internet, including social media, providing clients with the possibility of matching against more than 700,000 faces the company claims are tied to terrorism.
The Extremism Machine (University of Toronto Magazine)
The Capitol uprising of January 6, 2021, led to intensified discussions regarding the rise of disinformation. John Scott-Railton, Ron Deibert, and Gabrielle Lim comment on the Citizen Lab’s mission to track technological threats against civil society.
The Agenda: Fix Social Media, Save Democracy
Ron Deibert joins TVO’s the Agenda to discuss his latest book, RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society.
CBC: Despite years of war, this Syrian activist remains hopeful of her country’s future
Citizen Lab researcher, Noura Al-Jizawi, reflects on her years as a leader fighting for democratic liberation in Syria. “Speaking about democracy is a bit easy. But working towards making democracy real is a really hard job,” she says.
New York Times: A Year After Wuhan, China Tells a Tale of Triumph (and No Mistakes)
In their reporting on how China handled the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the New York Times cites Citizen Lab research that outlines information controls on Chinese social media during the outbreak.