To compete and thrive in the 21st century, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information. In the 20th century, market capitalist democracies geared infrastructure, energy, trade, and even social policy to protect and advance that era’s key source of power—manufacturing. In this century, democracies must better account for information geopolitics across all dimensions of domestic policy and national strategy.
Despite growing notoriety, the spyware industry is more successful than ever. Using cases drawn from recent work investigating the hacking of WhatsApp, this talk will illustrate the scale of the problem, the human impact of the hacking, and some of the techniques that the spies are using to "go dark." In a troubling twist, spyware companies that once avoided the limelight have begun putting themselves forward as a 'solution' to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scott-Railton will evaluate these recent efforts, and discuss what the pandemic means for efforts to limit surveillance harms.
John Scott-Railton is a Senior Researcher at Citizen Lab at The University of Toronto. His work focuses on technological threats to civil society, including targeted malware operations and online disinformation. His greatest hits include a collaboration with colleague Bill Marczak that uncovered the first iPhone zero-day and remote jailbreak seen in the wild, as well as the use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware to human rights defenders, journalists, and opposition figures in around the globe. Other investigations with Citizen Lab colleagues include the first report of ISIS-led malware operations, and China's "Great Cannon," the Government of China's nation-scale DDoS attack. He is completing a PhD at UCLA. Previously he founded The Voices Projects, collaborative information feeds that bypassed internet shutdowns in Libya and Egypt.