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.
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Publications
Uncovering Webloc
An Analysis of Penlink’s Ad-based Geolocation Surveillance Tech
Location data collected from mobile apps and digital advertising can reveal habits, interests and almost any other aspect of someone’s life. In this report, we uncover how a geolocation surveillance system called Webloc uses ad-based data to monitor hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
Not Safe for Politics
Cellebrite Used on Kenyan Activist and Politician Boniface Mwangi
Following the widely-condemned arrest in July 2025 of prominent Kenyan opposition voice Boniface Mwangi, the Citizen Lab analyzed artefacts from devices seized during the arrest. We found that Cellebrite’s forensic extraction tools were used on his Samsung phone while it was in police custody. This case adds to the concerning pattern of the misuse of Cellebrite technology by government clients.
From Protest to Peril
Cellebrite Used Against Jordanian Civil Society
Through a multi-year investigation, we find that the Jordanian security apparatus has deployed forensic extraction products manufactured by Cellebrite against civil society devices. We release these findings alongside reporting from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) which includes interviews with a few of the victims.
