Given our experiences, we have specific recommendations for how any federal commercial privacy legislation must be amended to better protect individuals from the predations and power of private organizations. In making our recommendations we have chosen to focus almost exclusively on the Openness and Transparency, Access to and Amendment of Personal Information, and Whistleblower sections of Bill C-11.

On March 22, 2021, Citizen Lab research associate Christopher Parsons appeared before the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations to testify about issues of national security, governance, and trust with regards to Chinese companies and their technical products and services.

In this explainer, we discuss the findings of our comparative analysis of security, privacy, and censorship issues in TikTok and Douyin.

The Citizen Lab’s response to the questionnaire of the U.N. Working Group on the use of mercenaries on the provision of military and security products and services in cyber space by cyber mercenaries and related actors and its human rights impact.

In order to contribute to the IPC’s deliberations in the triaging of its strategic priorities, this submission serves to provide particularized input with respect to the IPC’s public interest mandate in the oversight of law enforcement authorities when it comes to the use of algorithmic policing technology in Ontario.

في شهري يوليو وأغسطس 2020 استخدم عملاءٌ حكوميون برنامج التجسس بيغاسوس “Pegasus” من مجموعة “NSO” لاختراق 36 هاتفاً شخصياً لصحفيين ومنتجين ومراسلين و مدراء تنفيذيين في قناة الجزيرة. كما تم اختراق هاتف صحفية في قناة العربي، التي مقرها لندن.

Government operatives used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to hack 36 personal phones belonging to journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at Al Jazeera. The journalists were hacked by four Pegasus operators, including one operator MONARCHY that we attribute to Saudi Arabia, and one operator SNEAKY KESTREL that we attribute to the United Arab Emirates.

Circles is a surveillance firm that reportedly exploits weaknesses in the global mobile phone system to snoop on calls, texts, and the location of phones around the globe, and is affiliated with NSO Group, which develops the oft-abused Pegasus spyware. Using Internet scanning, we found a unique signature associated with the hostnames of Check Point firewalls used in Circles deployments, enabling us to identify Circles deployments in at least 25 countries.

Citizen Lab director, Professor Ron Deibert, is this year’s 2020 CBC Massey Lecturer. Accompanying the lectures is a book authored by Deibert, entitled RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society.