A “secret network” launched by the Canadian federal government last year, costing millions of dollars to taxpayers, came under close scrutiny following a suspected hack. Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christoper Parsons explains the possibilities behind the leaking of the document.

This article, written by Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons and CIPPIC Staff lawyer Tamir Israel, analyzes how successive federal governments of Canada have actively sought to weaken the communications encryption available to Canadians. The article covers regulations imposed on mobile telecommunications providers, state authorities’ abilities to compel decryption keys from telecommunications providers writ large, and Canada’s signals intelligence agency’s deliberate propagation of flawed encryption protocols.

The report, authored by Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons, examines how contemporary telecommunications surveillance is governed in Canada. He concludes that serious failures in transparency and accountability indicate that corporations are failing to manage Canadians’ personal information responsibly and that government irresponsibility surrounding accountability strains its credibility and aggravates citizens’ cynicism about the political process.

Our report reveals that UC Browser poorly secures data in its English and Chinese language versions for Android.

UC Browser is the most popular mobile web browser in China and India, boasting over 500 million users. This report provides a detailed analysis of how UC Browser manages and transmits user data, particularly private data, during its operation. Our research was prompted by revelations in a document leaked by Edward Snowden on which the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was preparing a story.

UC浏览器是一种移动浏览器，它目前拥有超过5亿的注册用户，是中国和印度最受欢迎的手机浏览器。在《啰嗦的松鼠：UC浏览器的隐私与安全问题》这一报告中，公民实验室(Citizen Lab)发现中文和英文安卓版UC浏览器中存在多个隐私及安全漏洞， 并讨论了它们的重要性。

In an internal report obtained by the Toronto Star, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) states that the spy agency cannot keep up with threats from state-sponsored hackers. Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons told the Toronto Star the report, along with cases like the cyber attack of the NRC by Chinese sponsored hackers, point to the militarization of the Internet.

Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons spoke to the Ottawa Citizen regarding the hacking of Bell Canada last year.

In an article published in the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s (IRPP) “Policy Options” blog, Research Fellow Jon Penney observed that the debate on Canada’s Bill C-51 Anti-Terror law has been “contentious and ranging, yet few commentators have drawn on experience or expert voices elsewhere to understand its implications.”

In an article contributed to the National Post, Citizen Lab Postdoctoral Fellow Christopher Parsons explains that the activities of the Communications Security Establishment constitute spying on Canadians. Parsons summarizes several findings regarding the mandate and practices of the organization leaked over the last year and a half, many of which strongly undermine CSE’s claim that Canadians are not “targeted” by domestic security agencies.