Professor Melanie A. Woodin
President, University of Toronto

invites University of Toronto alumni and friends to attend a reception, featuring a special presentation:

Chasing Shadows: Chronicles of Counter-Intelligence from the Citizen Lab

by

Professor Ron Deibert (O.C., O.Ont.)
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy
University of Toronto

For over twenty years, the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has pioneered investigations into digital security and human rights—from exposing state cyber espionage to uncovering the global spread of mercenary spyware targeting journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. Drawing from his latest book, Chasing Shadows, Deibert will recount how his mission to conduct "counter-intelligence for civil society" revealed surveillance around the inner circle of murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and uncovered domestic espionage campaigns across Mexico, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Thailand, El Salvador, and most recently, Italy.

As the Citizen Lab disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped improve the digital security of billions, it too became a target—caught in the same sinister crosshairs as those it sought to protect. Deibert will also look ahead to the future of his mission and the rising challenges of AI-enabled subversion, Dark PR, and advertising intelligence, and how the public-interest research the Lab has championed is now under threat from a growing tide of despotism and authoritarianism.

About the Speaker

Ron Deibert is a professor of political science, and the founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security.

As Director of the Citizen Lab, Deibert has overseen as principal investigator and been a contributing author to more than 180 reports covering path breaking research on cyber espionage, commercial spyware, Internet censorship, and human rights. These reports have been cited widely in global media, garnering more than 25 front page exclusives in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, and other leading media outlets, and have been cited by policymakers, academics, and civil society as foundational to the understanding of digital technologies, human rights, and global security.

Deibert currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Political Sociology, Explorations in Media Ecology, Review of Policy Research, and the Journal of Global Security Studies. He has also served on the advisory boards of Access Now, Privacy International, the technical advisory groups of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and is currently a member of the advisory boards of PEN Canada and the Spyware Accountability Initiative.

 Learn more about Ron and his work here