About People

Siena Anstis

Senior Legal Advisor

Siena Anstis is a senior legal advisor at the Citizen Lab. She is a lawyer admitted to practice in Ontario and New York and a researcher in the areas of international law, human rights, technology, and migration.

She has worked as a refugee lawyer in Canada, a litigation associate at Morrison Foerster LLP in New York City, and as a judicial clerk at the Supreme Court of Canada (2015-2016) and the Court of Appeal for Ontario (2014-2015). She holds a Master of Law from the University of Cambridge (2020), a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University (2014), and a Bachelor of Arts in journalism and anthropology from Concordia University (2009). She is currently completing a PhD in Law at the University of Oslo.

Publications

Security Without Safety

Queering Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transnational Repression

Citizen Lab researchers Noura Aljizawi, Shaila Baran, Marcus Michaelsen, and Siena Anstis published a paper titled “Security Without Safety: Queering Cybersecurity in the Age of Digital Transnational Repression” in the special issue on “Digital Intersectionality and Marginalization in the Majority World” of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety.

Espionage Against the European Parliament

Member of Committee Investigating Spyware Hacked with Pegasus

We found that former Member of the European Parliament Stelios Kouloglou was hacked with Pegasus spyware while serving on the PEGA committee, which investigated Pegasus and other spyware abuses in Europe. Through forensic analysis of his device, we found that the attackers could have had access to confidential documents and committee deliberations.

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