Date and time

Wed, Feb 5, 2025 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM EST

Location

Rotman School of Management + Livestream

105 Saint George Street Toronto, ON M5S 3E6 Canada

Show map

Refund Policy

Refunds up to 1 day before event

Agenda

5:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Author discussion

6:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Light refreshments and book signing

About this event

• Event lasts 1 hour

Following the conversation, we invite you to join us for a meet-and-greet with the author, book signing and light refreshments.

Topic:

Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy (Simon & Schuster, February 4, 2025)

Speaker:

Ronald J. Deibert, Founder and Director, The Citizen Lab, University of Toronto

Book Synopsis:

Like a John Le Carré novel updated for the digital age, Chasing Shadows provides a gripping account of how the Citizen Lab, the world’s foremost digital watchdogs, uncovered dozens of cyber espionage cases in countries around the world.

In this real-life spy thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert details the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. He reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere.

Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion. There, autocrats and dictators peer into their targets’ lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered.

From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counterintelligence for civil society. As this small team of investigators disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect.

Deibert recounts how the Lab exposed the world’s pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group—the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus—in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

About our speaker:

Ronald J. Deibert is the founder and director of the Citizen Lab, a world-renowned digital security research center at the University of Toronto. The bestselling author of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society and Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet, he has also written many landmark articles and reports on espionage operations that infiltrated government and NGO computer networks. His team’s exposés of the spyware that attacks journalists and anti-corruption advocates around the world have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and other media. Deibert has received multiple honors for his cutting-edge work, and in 2022 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada—the country’s second-highest honor of merit.

Event Logistics:

This event is available to attend in-person or virtually via livestream.

Rotman Events is committed to accessibility for all people. If you have any access needs or if there are any ways we can support your full participation in this session, please email Mandi Gosling [events@rotman.utoronto.ca] no later than 2 weeks in advance of the event and we will be glad to work with you to make the appropriate arrangements.

General Admission: In-Person + Book Ticket Details

• The event will be hosted in Desautels Hall at the Rotman School of Management (105 Saint George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3E6). Your registration fee includes a copy of the book, meet-and-greet with book signing by the author, as well as access to a video replay of the session for 30 days.

General Admission: Livestream + Book Ticket Details

• Rotman Events will email registrants a link to the livestream. Your registration fee includes access to the livestream, video replay for 30 days, a copy of the book and shipping fees. The book will be shipped to registrants after the event. Please allow 3 - 4 weeks for delivery.

30-day Catch-up Viewing

• Unable to attend the event due to scheduling conflicts? Not to worry. All registrants (in-person or livestream) can access the full recording on-demand for one month after the live event.

Cancellation & Refund Policy

• Refunds will only be issued for cancellations received in writing NO LATER than 24 hours prior to the event. Please email events@rotman.utoronto.ca for processing.

• In-person registrants who do not pick up their book at the event will have 5 business days to request postal delivery by emailing us at events@rotman.utoronto.ca. All unclaimed books will be returned to the publisher after that time.

Questions: events@rotman.utoronto.ca, Mandi Gosling