On May 25, senior research associate Kate Robertson appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs to testify on Bill C-8.

In her testimony, Robertson testified that targeted recommendations were needed to address constitutional and cybersecurity deficits in the legislation.

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Citizen Lab senior research fellow Jon Penney and co-author Bruce Schneier wrote an op-ed in The Conversation arguing that despite younger Americans’ overwhelmingly soured view of Donald Trump’s second presidency, they are not protesting for a simple reason: They are afraid. 

Penney and Schneier call this impact a chilling effect – “the behavioural tendency for people in face of a threat to self-censor and restrain their activities for self-protection.” The U.S. federal government has a systemic pattern of employing surveillance, personal threats, uncertainty, and abuse of power far beyond campuses. Resisting the tendency to self-censor and conform, has to be the norm, not the exception, argue Penney and Schneier. 

This article has been republished by Salon and the McClatchy Media Group, which distributes 31 newspapers across the U.S. 

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Citizen Lab doctoral fellow Swantje Lange spoke with the Hasso Plattner Institut (HPI) about sophisticated surveillance campaigns being used to exploit mobile networks, sharing that “the mobile network is highly opaque and extremely complex.” 

Lange also discussed a recent Citizen Lab report she co-authored with Gary Miller, which showed how weaknesses in technology and governance allow mobile networks to be used as covert surveillance platforms. 

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Senior research associate Kate Robertson writes for The Walrus about the potential implications of Canada’s proposed Bill C-22 for future data-sharing agreements with foreign law enforcement agencies. While the legislation would give Ottawa broad new powers to compel technology providers to build surveillance capabilities into their systems, it would also “move the ball up the field towards a CLOUD Act agreement” with the United States. 

The CLOUD Act, currently being negotiated between the two countries behind closed doors, “could give agencies like the FBI the power to carry out real-time surveillance including wiretaps and phone hacking in Canada.” Despite concerns about the “serious threat” to the rule of law in the United States, the Canadian government has “not yet signaled any reluctance to strike a deal, despite the turmoil south of the border,” says Robertson.  

Although surveillance law reform has been a top issue for the U.S. in trade negotiations, the Canadian government has not provided an explanation about why the U.S. is pressuring Canada to pass these reforms. “In the absence of public transparency,” Robertson writes, “observers are left to read between the lines.”

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Canada’s proposed Bill C-22 could threaten encryption and privacy, say companies like Signal and Meta. Speaking with The Globe and Mail, senior research associate Kate Robertson says the bill could lead to the rollout of forced metadata collection for messaging apps.

Robertson said that government officials were reticent to commit to protection for encryption. “Encrypted communication systems are a lifeline for human rights defenders, journalists, and dissidents around the world,” she said.

The post Signal Warns It Would Pull Out of Canada if Made to Comply with Lawful Access Bill appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert recently spoke at the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting II on Safeguarding Civil Space in the Digital Age. 

While the growth of the mercenary spyware industry is a major concern, Deibert noted that “spyware is only the sharp point of the spear in a massive, growing, and largely unregulated surveillance marketplace that is deeply anchored in the personal data surveillance economy.”

He called for liberal democratic countries to resist using “national security or counterterrorism as an excuse to override oversight and public accountability.” Instead, “governments must put words into actions…to protect civil society and those most vulnerable to the spread of authoritarianism worldwide.”

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Senior research fellow Jon Penney spoke with Michael Geist on the Law Bytes podcast about his new book “Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age.” Chilling effects refers to our tendencies to self-censor or constrain behaviour in the face of perceived threats. This is behaviour that Penney notes is “deeply ingrained in our psychology through evolutionary processes.”

Following the Snowden revelations that the Five Eyes had been surveilling their own citizens, Penney found that “people were chilled about accessing matters of really important public policy,” and other topics. Views dropped on privacy-sensitive content, both in the short- and long-term, due to concerns about surveillance.

Penney argues that when people are deterred from exercising their rights and freedoms, democratic norms become eroded. 

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Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert recently spoke with NPR’s Rob Schmitz on All Things Considered about the Lab’s new investigation of Webloc, a geolocation surveillance system that uses ad-based data to monitor people across the globe.

Deibert explains how the internet ecosystem has been designed around personal data surveillance–collecting information on users that is sold to advertisers. Webloc enables governments to gain access to this information to track individuals. Experts are concerned with the way this technology is being used by agencies such as ICE to “clearly circumvent legal protections that protect citizens.”

While it’s practically impossible to protect yourself from data harvesting if you use a phone or the internet, says Deibert, turning off location sharing information inoculates users “to some degree.”

The post A New Study Shows How Ad-Based Technology is Used for Surveillance appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

A group of 25 rights and privacy organizations and experts delivered an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney and every Member of Parliament calling for the full withdrawal of Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act. Among the signatories are Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert , senior researcher Noura Aljizawi, senior fellow Lex Gill, and senior research associate Kate Robertson.

The letter warns that the bill introduces potential for privacy violations, such as allowing the government to force digital services to record and retain up to a full year of detailed metadata on every person in Canada and abroad. 

Bill C-22 would also compel an “enormous and poorly defined” set of providers to build surveillance backdoors into their products. Its provisions could “weaken the rules governing police access to personal information, all while facilitating a vast expansion of government surveillance,” according to a signatory.

The post Kill Bill C-22: Says Civil Society to Parliament appeared first on The Citizen Lab.

The Edmonton Police Service is trialing new bodycam facial recognition technology to identify what they have deemed “high-risk offenders.”

Speaking to the CBC, senior research associate Kate Robertson says, “As someone who has been studying algorithmic policing technologies for nearly a decade, and [previously] a lawyer in Canada’s justice system, I have to say that this is likely the most high risk algorithmic surveillance program that I have observed to date in Canada.”

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