Christopher Parsons was interviewed by a number of media outlets throughout March, focusing on government access to telecommunications data held by private companies, and on companies’ internal data handling practices.
Citizen Lab Research Fellow Jason Q. Ng was quoted in a recent story about Chinese microblogging platform Weibo.
Cyber Steward Shahzad Ahmad, Director of Bytes for All (B4A), has won the Doughty Street Advocacy Award as part of Index on Censorship’s 2014 Freedom of Expression Awards. Ahmad was nominated in the advocacy category which recognizes activists fighting for free expression around the world.
The Citizen Lab is proud to once again be a host organization for the Google Policy Fellowship program. Deadline for application is April 14 2014 Midnight Pacific time Full details are available from the Google Policy Fellowship Program website
Bytes for All (B4A) is continuing its battle at the Lahore High Court against Internet censorship in Pakistan. The court case has highlighted the ongoing censorship of YouTube in Pakistan, a result of the video sharing site’s refusal to block the controversial “Innocence of Muslims” video.
In the past 24 hours The Citizen Lab has identified a maliciously repackaged copy of the popular circumvention software Psiphon 3. This post describes the malware and outlines steps to be taken.
As a follow-up to our post about the number of sites miscategorized by SmartFilter, our tests with Blue Coat show that miscategorization is not a problem limited to a single product. We should be skeptical of any company’s claims that they are able to categorize much of the web accurately, or that their rate of “collateral damage” is very low.
The Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto is one of ten non-profits in the U.S. and abroad to receive the New Digital Age Grants, funded through a $1 million donation by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy.
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.
Where do human rights and online rights meet? Is there a clash between online freedom and human rights? Is there room for self-regulation? These are some of the questions that a recently concluded online discussions report on Internet freedom in Africa explores.
