The trajectories of the U.S. and Chinese governments on cyber security have officially diverged with the May 19 unsealing of an indictment against five Chinese nationals accused of cyber espionage against U.S. companies.

In this post we explain how Canadians can issue requests to their telecommunications companies to learn what personal information those companies collect, retain, and disclose about them. We argue that Canadians should do this both to empower themselves and to enable Canadian policy experts and government officials to better hold the companies to account.

Penney writes about how the Fair Elections Act will make it even easier for Canadian political parties to access our personal information and undermine democracy.

In this post we analyze the partial disclosures concerning Canada’s federal agencies’ domestic telecommunications surveillance practices. We argue that key federal agencies remain unaccountable to Parliamentarians and the Canadian public alike, and that accountability measures are urgently needed for Canadians to understand the extent of their federal government’s surveillance activities.

On January 20, 2014 the Citizen Lab along with leading Canadian academics and civil liberties groups asked Canadian telecommunications companies to reveal the extent to which they disclose information to state authorities. This post summarizes and analyzes the responses from the companies, and argues that the companies have done little to ultimately clarify their disclosure policies. We conclude by indicating the subsequent steps in this research project.

Canadians should demand more from government in reigning in electronic spying and cyber-policing. But we should also, as citizens, subscribers, and users, demand more from our internet and telecommunication service providers.

Canadian scholars and civil liberties organizations have come together to ask that many of Canada’s most preeminent telecommunications companies disclose the kinds, amounts, and regularity at which state agencies request telecommunications data pertaining to Canadians.

What to do about the growing “Digital Arms” market? The spread of technologies like mobile phones and social networks have enabled corporations and governments to eavesdrop on a mass scale. Fulfilling the demand for surveillance tools, a range of companies now sell surveillance backdoors and vulnerabilities, described as “lawful intercept” software.

Citizen Lab Communications Officer Irene Poetranto authored an op-ed in The Jakarta Post on 14 December. In Time for greater transparency, Poetranto writes about the recent spying allegations by the Australian spy agency and the market for surveillance technologies.

In a piece published in the Globe and Mail today, Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert argues that telecommunications companies must not be compelled to build secret vulnerabilities into their systems, known as back doors.