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.

This annotated bibliography compiles and summarizes relevant literature on “digital transnational repression” (i.e., where states seek to exert pressure—using digital tools—on citizens living abroad in order to constrain, limit, or eliminate political or social action that threatens regime stability or social and cultural norms within the country). While transnational repression itself is not a new phenomenon, there has been limited research on how such repression is enabled and expanded by digital tools.

It is encouraging to see the provincial government undertake efforts to improve the state of privacy law in Ontario, given the increasingly ubiquitous data commodification and surveillance of our behaviours, bodies, online and offline activities, and lives. To that end, the Citizen Lab submitted a brief which included 21 recommendations for legal and policy reform in Ontario, with a view to strengthening the privacy and data protection rights of individuals in the province.

This submission outlines Canadian technology companies and the threat they pose to human rights abroad, as well as suggests mechanisms the Government of Canada’s RBC strategy can adopt to address the harmful impacts of Canadian-made technology. 

This document provides an explainer to a new report from Citizen Lab and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law on the use and human rights implications of algorithmic policing practices in Canada.

This report examines algorithmic technologies that are designed for use in criminal law enforcement systems, including a human rights and constitutional law analysis of the potential use of algorithmic policing technologies.

Findings from this study underscore that online and offline threats should not be viewed as separate phenomena, but rather as overlapping and mutually reinforcing.

Amidst calls for reform in Togo, NSO Group’s spyware was used to target voices for change including a bishop, priest, and opposition politicians.

How do information controls impact different communities? Debates on Internet-enabled mass surveillance practices have increasingly dominated mainstream conversations, especially after the Snowden revelations. However, what is not as well documented is targeted surveillance operations against civil society that threaten their ability to hold governments accountable.