“As Research In Motion faces an increasingly public dispute with several countries over the ability to monitor communication on its BlackBerry devices, virtually all other major technology communications companies have remained silent on the issue. That may soon change: RIM is likely just the first test case.

The government of India indicated yesterday that RIM isn’t the only company from which it will demand greater monitoring access. State authorities listed Internet phone company Skype SA and Google Inc., provider of the wildly popular Gmail service, as targets.

The move signals that the issue of monitoring data traffic goes far beyond RIM’s encrypted BlackBerrys – and probably has more to do with a looming collision between the advance of digital communication and the security demands of the state than with the Ontario company’s technology.”

From The Globe and Mail

Faculty Ronald J. Deibert Professor of Political Science, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy Director, The Citizen Lab email: r.deibert at utoronto.ca (pgp) Staff Masashi Crete-Nishihata Associate Director, The Citizen Lab email: masashi at citizenlab.ca (pgp) Christopher Parsons Research Associate, The Citizen Lab email: christopher at christopher-parsons.com Siena Anstis Senior Legal Advisor, The… Read more »

The development of computer software and hardware in closed-source, corporate environments limits the extent to which technologies can be used to empower the marginalized and oppressed. Various forms of resistance and counter-mobilization may appear, but these reactive efforts are often constrained by limitations that are embedded in the technologies by those in power. In the… Read more »

U of T Magazine story about the 2003 Citizen Lab documentary “Into America,” directed by Mike Downie, found here

Webcams, tracking devices, and interlinked databases are leading to the elimination of unmonitored public space. Are we prepared for the consequences of the intelligence-gathering network we’re unintentionally building? From Technology Review

in the future, we could be tracked because we’ll be wearing, eating and carrying objects that are carefully designed to do so. The generic name for this technology is RFID, which stands for radio frequency identification. RFID tags are miniscule microchips, which already have shrunk to half the size of a grain of sand. From… Read more »

Find a gun, see America Students hit road in search of the U.S. By MIKE STROBEL — Toronto Sun Pile five college kids into an RV and send them off to find America and they will tell you about … Guns, Guns, Guns. As the Guess Who used to say.