The Vicious Cycle: Algorithmic Rage Farming, Privatized Subversion, Chilling Effects and the Spread of Authoritarian Practices 🇨🇦
Join Ronald Deibert as he explores Citizen Lab’s groundbreaking work on digital security, surveillance, and human rights, drawing insights from his book Chasing Shadows.
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 Ronald Deibert’s latest book, Chasing Shadows, the author will recount how his lab’s 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.
He will also look ahead to the future of Citizen Lab’s mission and the rising challenges of AI-enabled subversion, Dark PR, and advertising intelligence, and how the kind of public-interest research the Lab has championed is now under threat from a growing tide of despotism and authoritarianism.