A few months ago when a Canadian research group exposed the GhostNet, a brazen cyber-espionage network, the story briefly made headlines. Most of us marvelled at the ingenuity and nefariousness of the alleged perpetrator, the Chinese government. Some may have momentarily fretted about implications for international security. But the man who helped break the GhostNet story, Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies, says the implications are at once more far-reaching and more immediate — especially, perhaps, for lawyers.