Asia Pacific
RightsCon, the world’s leading summit on human rights in the digital age, is just around the corner and will be held in Taipei, Taiwan and online from February 24–27, 2025. Researchers from The Citizen Lab are scheduled to speak in a series of discussions, panels, and workshops at RightsCon addressing some of the most urgent […]
In March 2024, Emile Dirks, research associate at The Citizen Lab, along with Ausma Bernot (Griffith University), and Yves Moreau (University of Leuven) prepared a written submission in response to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights call for input on the application of digital technologies in the administration of justice.
In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out on TaiwanPlus, Rebekah Brown, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, speaks with reporter Herel Hughes to unpack the alarming rise of commercial spyware and its misuse across the globe.
Meryem and her family left the Xinjiang region in China for Turkey in the early 1990s, before settling in North America. As a human rights defender, Meryem has experienced various digital threats in response to her activism. She is frequently attacked by what she believes to be Chinese state-backed trolls on X, Facebook, and in the comment section on public Zoom meetings.
Since 2014, the Chinese government has escalated its repression against Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. The entire region has been subjected to a comprehensive system of mass surveillance, mobility controls, arbitrary detention, forced labor, and forced sterilizations. China’s efforts extend also across borders as its authorities engage in a widespread campaign of transnational repression that targets individuals both on the basis of their ethnic identity and their activities.
Drawing on the lived experiences of 85 women human rights defenders originating from 24 countries of origin and residing in 23 host countries, we examine how gender and sexuality play a central role in digital transnational repression.
On November 14, 2024, The Citizen Lab’s Irene Poetranto will participate in the panel “What the World Can Learn from Indonesia’s Democracy” hosted by the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
This report performs the first public analysis of MMTLS, the main network protocol used by WeChat, an app with over one billion users. The report finds that MMTLS is a modified version of TLS, however some of the modifications have introduced cryptographic weaknesses.
Research FAQ for the full report “Should We Chat, Too? Security Analysis of WeChat’s MMTLS Encryption Protocol”
The Citizen Lab’s Emile Dirks will present at the upcoming APSA 2024 Annual Meeting & Exhibition as part of a panel discussing how autocrats and aspiring autocrats capture social institutions and stifle counter-mobilization. At the event, Dirks will present a working paper co-authored with Diana Fu, associate professor of political science at the University of […]