Author: Ron
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✴︎ blogCanada’s new national security bill: one step forward, two steps back?
Over the last year, the Canadian government has been engaged in extensive public consultations meant to address widespread concerns around C-51 (the anti-terror law implemented by Prime Minister Harper’s government) as well as a range of other national security practices, policies, and oversight and public accountability issues raised by Canadians. (I participated in some of…
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✴︎ blogKorean Child Monitoring Applications: Insecure by Design
Nearly every day it seems, a friend asks about how to cope with a digital security risk. Among those with the most acute concerns are parents of minor children, many of whom now carry with them mobile devices. Parents ask how they can protect their children from inappropriate content, whether their child’s use of their…
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✴︎ blogMexican Surveillance Abuse Continues
We are publishing yet another update to the ongoing investigations Citizen Lab has been conducting, in partnership with R3D, SocialTic, and Article 19, on abuse of commercial spyware in Mexico. Our latest report shows that the Claudio X. González, director of the Mexican anti-corruption organization Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI), was…
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✴︎ blogYet More Evidence of Gross Misuse of NSO Group Spyware In Mexico
The Citizen Lab’s investigation into the abuse of commercial spyware in Mexico continues with yet more troubling findings. Today, we are releasing a new report that affirms two additional individuals’ phones were targeted with Israeli-based NSO Group’s sophisticated Pegasus spyware technology. As in some of the prior cases we researched, the individuals in question…
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✴︎ blogLetter to Blackstone Group Regarding Possible Acquisition of NSO Group
For the last year, Citizen Lab has written five separate reports that document extensive abuse of, and lack of controls around the use of spyware manufactured by the Israeli cyber warfare company, NSO Group. These reports are part of a larger interest we have at the Citizen Lab in the lack of controls around the…
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✴︎ blogA World Without Liu Xiaobo
Liu Xiaobo died of cancer last week. A veteran of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and one of the authors of the Charter 08 manifesto advocating for democratic reform, Liu was China’s first Nobel Peace Prize winner. In spite of Liu’s advocacy for non-violent change, Chinese authorities sentenced Liu in 2009 to eleven years’ imprisonment…
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✴︎ blogInternational Investigation Into Mexican Mass Disappearance Under Surveillance
The Mexican surveillance scandal in which the Citizen Lab is involved now widens substantially. Our latest report confirms that a phone belonging to an international group of experts from several countries assembled by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (known as the GIEI), charged with investigating the 2014 Iguala Mass Disappearance, was targeted with infection…
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✴︎ blogMore Than Meets the Eye
Every day we hear warnings not to open attachments, click on links, or enter our credentials into websites that do not look trustworthy. But what if they do look legit? How do we tell? Our latest report shows not only the lengths to which an espionage operation will go to fool users, but it also…
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✴︎ blogMexico Wages Cyber Warfare Against Journalists, and their minor children
For years, Citizen Lab has been sounding alarms about the abuse of commercial spyware. We have produced extensive evidence showing how surveillance technology, allegedly restricted to government agencies for criminal, terrorism, and national security investigations, ends up being deployed against civil society. Today’s report not only adds to the mountain of such evidence, it details…
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✴︎ blogFrom Russia, with Tainted Love
I am pleased to announce a new Citizen Lab report, entitled “Tainted Leaks: Disinformation and Phishing With a Russian Nexus.” The report is authored by the Citizen Lab’s Adam Hulcoop, John Scott-Railton, Peter Tanchak, Matt Brooks, and myself, and can be found here. Our report uncovers a major disinformation and cyber espionage campaign with hundreds…