Hacking Back: Censorship, Surveillance and Resistance on the Internet

About

Have authoritarian regimes in China, Vietnam, and elsewhere found their match in Ronald Diebert and his colleagues at the 'Citizen Lab,' University of Toronto? These regimes seek to monitor, limit and control free access to the Internet by their citizens. Citizen lab promises to stop them, through the development of software that will enable Internet users around the world to circumvent government control of the web thus striking a blow for freedom and democracy. Diebert will discuss this work, the global network that has produced it (the OpenNet Initiative), and its prospects for the future.

Ron Deibert (BA, MA, PhD) is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative, a research and advocacy project that examines Internet censorship and surveillance, and the CiviSec Project, which develops information security tools and strategies for human rights and humanitarian organizations worldwide. He has been a consultant to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian Department of National Defence, Human Rights in China, and the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) on issues relating to Internet censorship, surveillance and circumvention, space technology, arms control, and international relations. He provides frequent expert commentary in newspapers and on television and radio shows, including the New York Times, BBC, Globe and Mail, CBC, CTV, Fox News, NPR, and USA Today. He was awarded the University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award (2002) and the Northrop Frye Distinguished Teaching and Research Award (2002), and was a Ford Foundation research scholar of Information and communication technologies (2002-2004).