News

NSO Group, the firm behind Pegasus spyware, has a new executive chairman who plans to use his ties to the Trump administration to improve the company’s reputation in the U.S. Speaking with the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton says that Pegasus creates “unbearable temptation for abuse” where “nobody […]

Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton speaks with TechCrunch about the proliferation of spyware use, and the effects it has on democracy. While it is ostensibly used to monitor criminals, Scott-Railton says that government spyware “needs to be treated like the threat to democracy and elections that it is.” Read more in TechCrunch.

Another member of Italian civil society has gone public about being a target of Paragon spyware. Francesco Nicodemo, a prominent Italian communications executive and political advisor,  is the fifth confirmed target of an ongoing spyware scandal in Italy.  Citizen Lab first identified the abuse of Paragon’s Graphite spyware against Italian civil society in March 2025, […]

In an interview with What Bitcoin Did, Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton discusses the proliferation of spyware and the repercussions of its use on victims. He explains how mass surveillance “ultimately leads to self-censorship,” with significant implications for our freedom. Watch here.

A new U.K. age-verification law aimed to protect children can push people to seedier parts of the web. Citizen Lab senior researcher John Scott-Railton spoke with the Washington Post about the “law of unintended consequences” faced by regulators.  The law “suppresses traffic to compliant platforms while driving users to sites without age verification,” says Scott-Railton. “The more […]