Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert and Senior Researcher Sarah McKune wrote an op-ed on the digital arms trade in the 13 March edition of the Ottawa Citizen.

In a report published by The School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, professor Ron Deibert argues that Canada has potential to be a global leader in cyber security, but this opportunity is being squandered because of the lack of a clear strategy in this area.

Titled “Teachers’ pension plan invests in Internet surveillance firm,” the Toronto Star editorial connects the investment group that manages the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) with Blue Coat Systems.

Created in 1986, the Order of Ontario, the Canadian province’s highest official honour, recognizes the highest level of individual excellence and achievement in any field.

The Citizen Lab report “The Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada” and its follow-up, “The Canadian Connection: One Year Later”, have been mentioned in the media in relation to the recent shutting down of Internet networks by the Assad regime in Syria.

This is an update to our November 2011 report titledThe Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada, which examined the use of web servers based in Canada, the U.S., and European countries to host Syrian government websites and websites of the Lebanese political party Hezbullah. Our findings indicate that, while many of the websites we examined in 2011 have changed hosting providers, a number of Syrian government and Hezbullah websites still maintain an online presence through the services of North American and European web hosts.

Director Ron Deibert wrote a paper for the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute titled Distributed Security as Cyber Strategy: Outlining a Comprehensive Approach for Canada in Cyberspace.

In his piece, Professor Deibert writes about Canada’s role in securing cyberspace, quasi-national cyber armies such as the Syrian Electronic Army and the challenges faced by global civil society in cyberspace.

On Friday, January 27, 2012, Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert will join Ontario’s Information & Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian to celebrate International Privacy Day in an event titled Beware of “Surveillance by Design:” Standing Up for Freedom and Privacy.

A new report, entitled The Canadian Connection: An investigation of Syrian government and Hezbullah web hosting in Canada, continues Citizen Lab research into the intersection of the private sector, authoritarianism, and cyberspace regulation, turning our attention to a component of the Internet that does not typically receive the same amount of attention as filtering, surveillance, and computer network attack products and services: web hosting services.