Cynthia Khoo is a technology and human rights lawyer and researcher, specializing in the intersection of emerging technologies, the Internet, human rights, civil liberties, and anti-oppression. Her expertise focuses on how digital technologies impact the equality, privacy, and free expression rights of historically marginalized groups. Over the years, her legal practice and scholarship have spanned issues such as copyright law, net neutrality, communications law, and online censorship; data protection, algorithmic policing, and state surveillance; stalkerware, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, and digital platform regulation; and AI liability.
Khoo has been engaged as a research fellow at the Citizen Lab since 2018. From 2021 to 2024, she was a senior associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law in Washington, D.C., where she led the Center’s legal and policy advocacy, research, and coalition-building efforts on algorithmic discrimination and worker surveillance.
Khoo is called to the Ontario Bar. She holds a J.D. from the University of Victoria and LL.M. (Law and Technology) from the University of Ottawa, where she worked as junior counsel at and represented the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) as an intervener in cases before the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Publications
(Un)forced Errors
Analysis of Proposed Surveillance Law Expansion under Bill C-22, An Act respecting lawful access
This submission analyzes Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act, which would enact broad surveillance obligations and reforms in Canada. Issues include: the bill’s sweeping scope, significant constitutional and human rights risks, transparency and accountability deficits, and dangers to encryption and Canada’s cybersecurity. We recommend entirely withdrawing several elements of the bill and suggest amendments to mitigate harms.
Canada-U.S. Cross-Border Surveillance Negotiations Raise Constitutional and Human Rights Whirlwind under U.S. CLOUD Act
Legal researchers Cynthia Khoo and Kate Robertson warn that a Canada-U.S. CLOUD agreement would extend the reach of U.S. law enforcement into Canada’s digital terrain to an unprecedented extent, and that if signed, this agreement would effectively allow U.S. police to demand personal data directly from any provider of an “electronic communication service” or “remote computing service” in Canada, so long as it had some ties to the U.S.
Comments on the Federal Government’s Proposed Approach to Address Harmful Content Online
Citizen Lab researchers reviewed the consultation materials, including the “Technical Paper” and the “Discussion Guide” associated with the government’s proposal to address what it has referred to as “online harms.” We provide the following comments in response to that consultation process.
