The internet watchdog Citizen Lab has been
remarkably efective in calling to account
governments and private sector irms that use
information technology to put people in peril.
Its digital sleuths at the University of Toronto’s
Munk School of Global Afairs are best known
for exposing abusive targeted espionage,
particularly through the use of hyper-intrusive
spyware from Israel’s NSO Group. Its Pegasus
tool has been used to hack and surveil dozens of
journalists, human rights activists and dissidents
globally. In November, the U.S. government
blacklisted NSO Group and Apple sued it and
notiied Pegasus victims.
Citizen Lab’s work elsewhere is less known.
It exposes digital espionage campaigns and
insecure software, most recently an app the
Chinese government created for athletes,
journalists and other foreigners attending the
Winter Olympics.
An interview with Citizen Lab’s director,
57-year-old political scientist and prize-winning
author Ron Deibert, has been edited for length
and clarity.
Q: You founded Citizen Lab in 2001. How did
that happen?
A: I was doing work on how intelligence agencies
use satellite reconnaissance technology for arms
control veriication. It exposed me to a world that
I didn’t even know existed. I saw the mixture of
tools being used to gather electronic evidence
and wondered why something like that could
not be done in the public interest, on behalf of
journalists, NGOs, and human rights activists. And
what better place to do such evidence-based
research – alongside people with technical skills