Ottawa needs a strategy for cyberwar
National Post (comment) June 30, 2009 Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski Recently, the Canadian envoy to Iran was called in and admonished by Iranian officials for contributing to the destabilitization of the regime because of support for social networking tools, like Twitter and Facebook. The envoy must have scratched his head in puzzlement. The Iranians’ [...]
NPR Here and Now interview
I did an interview with NPR’s Here and Now about psiphon and The Use of Proxy Servers in Iran.
Psiphon, Iran, and OpenNet Initiative
There is a lot going on right now on so many exciting fronts. We at the OpenNet Initiative have released three major reports: An Asian regional overview, and country reports on China and Iran. We released these at the ONI Asia regional meeting in Penang Malaysia. Thanks to the ONI team for all of their [...]
Summer of Psi
Inspired by Google’s Summer of Code, this year, Psi-Lab — a joint project of the Citizen Lab and Psiphon Inc — will organize the “Summer of Psi”, which aims to establish a rich and highly interactive set of communication and archiving tools and accompanying documentation to enable community participation in Psiphon open source development. Expect [...]
Psiphon Launch – Let the revolution begin!
Last night in Toronto, at the new Psiphon digs, we held our public launch of Psiphon Inc — the first company to be spun out of the Citizen Lab. Although Psiphon is spinning out, its relationship with the Citizen Lab is stronger than ever. We have developed a strategic partnership with Psiphon around Psi-LAB — [...]
TVO Big Ideas
I am scheduled to appear on TVO Big Ideas this weekend; details below. Hacking Back: The Battle for Human Rights Online TVO: Saturday and Sunday November 22 and 23, 2008, 4 PM Repeats Saturday and Sunday at 5 am. RON DEIBERT In this lecture, political science professor Ron Deibert looks at the issue of internet [...]
Breaching Trust
I am pleased to announce our release of a major investigative report, Breaching Trust: An analysis of surveillance and security practices on China’s TOM-Skype platform, written by Nart Villeneuve, Psiphon Fellow, the Citizen Lab, at the Munk Centre for International Studies, the University of Toronto. The full report can be downloaded here. John Markoff of [...]
Software can bypass China’s “Great Firewall” but hard to get inside country
Two years ago the Citizen Lab released a program called Psiphon, which allows users in countries such as China and Iran to circumvent their governments’ Internet censorship. The free software uses computers outside the censoring country — known as proxies — to fetch web pages and send them back over encrypted connections. The technique is [...]
Testimony to US Congress
I am testifying to US Congress today, at the US China Economic and Security Review Commission. My testimony covers the research of the OpenNet Initiative on Internet censorship practices in China, the range and effectiveness of circumvention methods, including our own tool — psiphon, and the role of US and Western corporations in aiding and [...]
CBC National report on the Citizen Lab
On March 21, 2008, the CBC National ran a feature piece on the research and development activities of the Citizen Lab, including the ONI and psiphon. There are interviews with me, and with Nart Villeneuve. You can watch the piece here. The youtube version is here And here: