Inside Citizen Lab, the “Hacker Hothouse” protecting you from Big Brother:
Starting out in the basement of the Munk School of Global Affairs with a handful of students in the Spring of 2001, Deibert’s Citizen Lab now operates out of a third-story office on Bloor Street, on the northwest edge of the University of Toronto campus. But like the agencies its members often criticize, Citizen Lab has collaborators operating everywhere, supplying information about how state power is being exercised in cyberspace.
Deibert doesn’t mind the comparison. In fact, much of his inspiration for the Lab came from working inside the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs in the mid-‘90s, where he studied the use of satellite reconnaissance for arms control verification. The working group he was part of conceptualized a kind of “earth monitoring system” to enforce bans on nuclear testing—a worldwide system of satellites, underwater fences, and seismic stations designed to hold entire nations to account.
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Still, when it comes to what a “people’s intelligence agency” might look like, it’s hard to find a better template than the one created by Citizen Lab. And its hacker ethos is reflected in those it calls its allies.
One of the better descriptions of some of what we do, on a daily and ongoing basis, at the Citizen Lab.
Excited Pixels 