‘No defence against it’: Canadian researchers digging into cyber espionage

Ronald Deibert details Canada’s fight against cyber espionage in his book Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy

Citizen Lab founder Ronald Deibert is exploring some of the darkest areas of the internet – the companies that are spying on people on behalf of authoritarian governments.

“One minute your phone is perfectly fine, the next it’s funnelling data to some secret government agency on the other side of the world,” Deibert told CTV News.

Deibert chronicles the work he and his colleagues at the University of Toronto have done in Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy.

“There are now spyware programs that are available to governments that enable them to get into literally any phone, anywhere in the world and there is, as we speak, no defence against it,” Deibert said.

-Watch the full interview in the video player above

“I genuinely believe this is one of the biggest risks to civil society and to liberal democracy worldwide, when you have the capability being put in the hands of some of the world’s worst dictators and despots to basically pry open and spy on unwitting victims anywhere in the world.”