Professor Ron Deibert weighs in on CSEC spying on Canadians

January 31, 2014

It was recently revealed that the Communications Security Establishment of Canada (CSEC) has been spying on Canadians at airports using the free Wi-Fi. Professor Ron Deibert is the Department of Political Science’s resident expert on issues of internet security and surveillance and he recently authored an article in the Globe and Mail discussing CSEC’s spying program.

Read more about Professor Deibert.

Ron Deibert is the Director of the Citizen Lab and the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research and development lab working at the intersection of the Internet, global security, and human rights.

Read more about The Citizen Lab.

In May 2013 Deibert released his book Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet where he discusses how the internet is being used more and more as a tool to spy on people. Paul Meyer reviewed Black Code in Bout De Papier and writes “In both the domestic and foreign spheres, Deibert argues that it is urgent for those who support liberal democratic values “to articulate a compelling counter-narrative to reflexive state and corporate control over cyberspace”. In Black Code, Ron Deibert has made a major contribution to the development of such a narrative.”

Read the full review.

 

In response to the recent revelations by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, Deibert wrote an article for The Globe and Mail: “[The revelations] throw into sharp relief the obvious inadequacy of the existing ‘oversight’ mechanism, which operates entirely within the security tent. They cast into doubt all government statements made about the limits of such programs. They raise the alarming prospect that Canada’s intelligence agencies may be routinely obtaining data on Canadian citizens from private companies.”

Read the full article.