In this article Professor Ron Deibert discusses the active contestation of cyberspace and the need to protect the cyber commons. He calls on liberal democratic governments to form “a common domestic and foreign policy strategy that creates structural conditions to protect and preserve cyberspace as a secure, decentralized, and open commons”.

This article originally appeared in The 2011 G8 Deauville Summit: New World, New Ideas published by the G20 Research Group.

World Press Freedom Day, Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom
13th CCWPF Press Freedom Award

Acceptance speech on behalf of the Citizen Lab
Rafal Rohozinski, senior scholar
National Arts Center, Ottawa, Canada.
3 May 2011

Excellency, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

It is truly an honour and a humbling moment to accept this award on behalf of the Citizen Lab.

Just under 10 years ago, Ronald Deibert founded the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Following in the footsteps of other great Canadian media theorists — Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan — Ron recognized that the impact of technology lay in the social domain. With the help and support of Janice Stein, he created a unique space — a hothouse of sorts — where engineers, mathematicians, social scientists, and economists could treat cyberspace as a giant petri dish and examine its various transformative social and technical trajectories.

“The type of steps taken by the UAE are going to become more common in the future as governments struggle to gain control of cyberspace for national security reasons,” said Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

“Just like Google has had to grapple with the pressures of China and other countries who censor search engines, RIM will find itself the centre of pressures from governments eager to tap encrypted mobile data streams.”

From The Globe and Mail

Google’s announcement Tuesday that it might pull out of the Chinese market has cast a sharp focus on long-standing accusations about the shadowy world of Chinese hackers. Since at least 2002, human rights activists have accused the Chinese government and military of infiltrating their computers as well as those maintained by private companies and nongovernmental… Read more »

The decision by Google to draw a line and threaten to end its business operations in China brought attention to reports of Chinese high-technology espionage stretching back at least a decade. But despite Google’s suggestion that the hacking came from within China, it remained unclear who was responsible. Nevertheless, it presented the Obama administration with… Read more »

Google has just announced that there were successful attacks against their infrastructure resulting in the theft of intellectual property. Google traced the attacks to China and although the attribution regarding the Chinese government is unclear, Google also discovered that the attackers also attempted to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. From Nart… Read more »

JOB POSTING Position: Junior Software Developer Restricted to University of Toronto students Citizen Lab, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto POSITION SUMMARY As a key member of the Citizen Lab Development team, the Junior Software Developer will be involved with the design, coding, and testing of tools that are part of the OpenNet… Read more »

Psiphon Operator and Outreach Coordinator – Iran Psiphon is seeking an exceptionally qualified individual to support our Persian language outreach. We are looking for someone fluent in English and Farsi with a strong understanding and commitment to freedom of expression and an interest in building the best “right to know” software in the world. If… Read more »

Affirming that privacy is a fundamental human right set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and other human rights instruments and national constitutions; […] From The Public Voice Global Privacy Standards for a Global World The Madrid Privacy Declaration 3 November 2009 Affirming that privacy… Read more »

Director Ron Deibert gave a talk titled “The global battle for the future of cyberspace” in Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands, on 22 November at 3 PM. Deibert spoke alongside Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament, and William H. Dutton, a Professor of Internet Studies at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford…. Read more »