The rise of social networks, cloud computing, and mobile technologies has created new challenges to privacy and most users are unaware of the implications, says Ron Deibert

April 26, 2012

Goodspeed Analysis: The Arab Spring may have helped usher in a new era of government surveillance

Article by Peter Goodspeed Apr 21, 2012 in the National Post

…During Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution, the Revolutionary Guard effectively monitored cellphone traffic and activity on social media Internet sites such as Twitter and Facebook to identify and arrest anti-government ringleaders, says Ron Deibert, director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

The rise of social networks, cloud computing, and mobile technologies has created new challenges to privacy and most users are unaware of the implications, he says.

Once characterized by its openness and the free exchange of ideas, cyberspace is being re-shaped by technological change. An underworld of cybercrime has given rise to a cybersecurity industrial complex that feeds a cyberarms race, and fuels an increasingly intense geopolitical contest over the domain itself, says Mr. Deibert.

“Together, these driving forces are creating a kind of ‘perfect storm’ in cyberspace that threatens to subvert it entirely either through over-reaction or the imposition of heavy-handed controls,” he says…

Read Peter Goodspeed’s full article at The National Post online.