Important to protect privacy as government seeks to combat crime in the digital era

February 1, 2012

Director of U of T’s Citizen Lab addresses lawful access symposium

Article by Irene Poetranto

Publised Monday, January 30, 2012, UofT News

Fighting cybercrime and infringing on personal privacy need not go hand-in-hand, University of Toronto Professor Ron Deibert told the audience at a recent symposium to discuss the implications of proposed federal lawful access legislation.

Deibert, head of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs, was a speaker at the event, held by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commission to celebrate International Privacy Day. His work in the field of cyber security and human rights is well known. Together with his team at the Citizen Lab he has documented a troubling increase in the number of countries that filter access to information and censor the Internet, watching it grow from a mere handful in the early 2000s to more than 45 today.

“It is true that issues of cybercrime present major problems. Nearly every day there are new revelations of high-level breaches of government ministries and agencies,” Deibert, a professor of political science, told the audience assembled in Toronto’s MaRS auditorium. “However, I believe these challenges are not insurmountable and do not require radical infringements on privacy.” Continue reading at UofT News.