Don’t miss this panel discussion at FT Live’s Global Boardroom digital conference featuring Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert in conversation with Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, and Anne Neuberger, former deputy national security advisor for the United States. The session will explore critical lessons on the use of digital communications offered by the Signalgate scandal. Panellists will discuss the need for security protocols; the risk of legal violations; breaches of national security; harm to international relations; and the need for accountability.

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, a milestone recognizing women’s essential roles in peacemaking, conflict prevention, and post-conflict recovery. Yet, as the world celebrates this legacy, new realities challenge its celebration.

Digital technologies, once seen as tools for empowerment, have become instruments of surveillance, disinformation, and harassment, used by patriarchal and authoritarian actors to silence women human rights defenders and peacebuilders. Digital threats such as the hacking of devices, the exposure of private information and online abuse expand the spectrum of violence against women, creating new forms of insecurity. Even in exile, women with ties to authoritarian countries face gender-based digital transnational repression (GDTR) that aims to intimidate and silence them across borders.

This webinar brings together Citizen Lab researchers with policy advisors, Women, Peace and Security (WPS) experts, and human rights defenders to reflect on 25 years of the WPS agenda in the age of digital repression. The discussion will explore how gender, technology, and authoritarianism intersect to shape women’s participation in peace and security, and how targets of gendered digital attacks and feminist movements are building resilience and reimagining women’s digital security for the next 25 years.

Join us for a timely conversation on how digital repression and surveillance are reshaping women’s participation in peacebuilding and the Women, Peace and Security agenda.

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Meet the Speakers

KEYNOTE

Lara Scarpitta (she/her) is the OSCE senior Advisor on Gender Issues and Head of the Gender Issues Programme in the Office of the Secretary General; Senior Advisor and former Political Advisor on Peace, Mediation and Gender at the EU Delegation to the United Nations in Geneva.

MODERATOR

Urooj Mian, MSc., LL.M (she/her) is the CEO at Sustainable Human Empowerment (SHE) Associates. She holds a Master in Law (LL.M) in International Crime and Justice from the United Nations Interregional Crime Research Institute (UNICRI) and University of Torino, a Master in Social Science (M.Sc) in Peace and Conflict Research, from Uppsala University in Sweden, and a Bachelor of Public Affairs in Policy Management (B.PAPM) specializing in Human Rights and Law from Carleton University. She is respected as a gender, peace and security expert internationally and regularly works with human rights defenders.  She holds a combination of experience as a life-long activist, a policy-maker, and a founding executive director of a national advocacy-focussed not-for-profit forwarding the Women Peace and Security agenda. Urooj is currently the CEO at Sustainable Human Empowerment (SHE) Associates. A boutique consulting firm headquartered in Canada with a mission to empower sustainable impact and enable transformative change in the areas of gender equality, peace and justice worldwide.

PANELLISTS

Noura Aljizawi (she/her) is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab. Her research focuses on digital authoritarianism, disinformation, and digital transnational repression, informed by her background in human rights activism during the Syrian uprising. Aljizawi holds a Master’s degree in Global Affairs from the University of Toronto and has been recognized for her work in online safety and digital security.

Marcus Michaelsen (he/him) is a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab focusing on digital threats against exiles and diaspora communities. Previously, he was a senior post-doctoral researcher in the research group on Law, Science, Technology and Society at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has also held a senior information controls fellowship with the Open Technology Fund, and has worked as a lecturer and postdoc researcher in the Political Science Department of the University of Amsterdam. He holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Erfurt in Germany.

Siena Anstis (she/her) is a senior legal advisor at the Citizen Lab. Prior to joining Citizen Lab, she worked as a litigation associate at Morrison & Foerster in New York City and clerked for the Hon. Justice Cromwell at the Supreme Court of Canada and at the Court of Appeal for Ontario. Anstis holds a B.A. in Journalism and Anthropology from Concordia University, a Bachelor of Laws/Bachelor of Civil Law from McGill University, and a Master of Laws from the University of Cambridge.

Natalia Arno (she/her) is the president and founder of Free Russia Foundation. She is a prominent fighter for the advancement of democracy, human rights, and freedom. From 2004 to 2014, Ms. Arno worked for the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) Russia office. For her work in support of human rights and civil society in Russia, in 2012, Ms. Arno was given an ultimatum by Putin’s security services— to leave her homeland in 48 hours or face 20 years in prison on treason charges. Ms. Arno resolved to continue her fight and, in 2014, she created Free Russia Foundation (FRF) to serve as a platform for pro-democracy Russians. FRF provides support to civil societies of Russia and Belarus and has programs to assist Ukraine. FRF is a powerful global movement with centers in Washington, DC and Brussels; Kyiv, Ukraine; Berlin, Germany; Vilnius, Lithuania and Paris, France.

Sreshtha Das (they/them) is a queer disabled activist and works as a Gender Advisor/Researcher at Amnesty International. At Amnesty they developed the ‘Make It Safe Online for women, girls and LGBTI people’ project, which looks at technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TfGBV) through an intersectional and decolonial lens in different country contexts. Their work has largely been at the intersection of gender, sexuality, SRHR, militarisation and racial justice with various marginalised groups, using a structural and systemic analysis to holistically address social justice issues. 

xeenarh Mohammed (she/her) is a global leader at the intersection of technology, human rights, and governance, with over a decade of experience advancing equity and accountability in digital spaces. She currently serves as Co-Lead of the Digital Defenders Partnership, where she oversees global strategy and operations supporting human rights defenders across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

About UNSCR 1325

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted resolution (S/RES/1325) on women, peace and security on October 31, 2000. UNSCR 1325 calls for women’s meaningful participation in peace and security processes; however, 25 years later, the world faces new and complex realities that challenge the spirit of this resolution. Digital technologies have introduced new forms of communication and alternative public spaces. They have also become tools of surveillance, control, harassment, and violence in the hands of patriarchal, authoritarian, and militarized powers. 

The widespread use of mercenary spyware, targeted digital surveillance, online harassment, and disinformation campaigns has created an environment in which women journalists, human rights defenders, and peacemakers are systematically targeted. These technologies enable state and non-state actors to extend gender-based violence beyond physical spaces and into the digital sphere. Even when women are in exile, digital technology enables harmful actors to threaten and silence women from afar.

While the international community celebrates the progress made on the WPS agenda, women who engage in peacebuilding and human rights work still face multi-layered forms of violence that are simultaneously gendered, political, and technological.This webinar situates these realities within an intersectional feminist framework, recognizing that women from marginalized communities, including those defined by race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, religion, or migration status, experience compounded forms of exclusion and vulnerability. Understanding how these intersecting systems of power operate in digital environments is essential to advancing an inclusive and transformative WPS agenda for the next 25 years.

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Date: September 24, 2025
Time: 7:00 PM EDT
Where: Fox Theatre, Toronto
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On September 24, join Citizen Lab founder and director Ron Deibert for a screening of the 1981 film “Blow Out” – a neo–noir thriller that influenced him in his youth. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Deibert about the dangerous world of real-life covert political intrigue and how he and the Citizen Lab are fighting to expose major abuses of power.  Get tickets.

On September 12,  join the Citizen Lab’s Noura Aljizawi, Gabrielle Lim, and Jon Penney at the American Political Science Association 2025 annual meeting for their presentation of “The Three Faces of Transnational Repression.” They will draw on Citizen Lab research to discuss the multifaceted nature of transnational repression in the context of human rights dynamics in the session on Revisiting Human Rights Dynamics: National, International, and Organizational.

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Join Citizen Lab founder and director Ron Deibert as he explores the Lab’s groundbreaking work on digital security, surveillance, and human rights, drawing insights from his book Chasing Shadows. Deibert will also look ahead to the future of Citizen Lab’s mission and the rising challenges of AI-enabled subversion, Dark PR, and advertising intelligence, and how the kind of public-interest research the Lab has championed is now under threat from a growing tide of despotism and authoritarianism.

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On August 6, join the Citizen Lab’s director Ron Deibert at Black Hat 2025 for his keynote, Chasing Shadows: Chronicles of Counter-Intelligence from the Citizen Lab.

For over twenty years, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab has pioneered investigations into digital security and human rights—from exposing state cyber espionage to uncovering the global spread of mercenary spyware targeting journalists, activists, and human rights defenders.  Drawing from his latest book, Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy, Deibert will recount how the Lab’s mission to conduct “counter-intelligence for civil society” revealed surveillance around the inner circle of murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi and uncovered domestic espionage campaigns across Mexico, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Thailand, El Salvador, and most recently, Italy. 

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On June 28, join Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert, author of Chasing Shadows, for “Canada’s Secret Wars: Cold War Spies to Digital Surveillance with Ronald Deibert & Donald Mahar” at TIFA 2025. 

This book talk will examine Canada’s quiet history of espionage from the Cold War to digital spywares. Hear from the experts about the persistent espionage efforts in, and from, Canada and what this means for civil society and our digital rights. A book signing will follow this event. 

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Citizen Lab senior researcher Bill Marczak and co-presenter Daniel Roethlisberger will recount how they discovered a Pegasus exploit targeting iOS 10 devices back in 2017. They will describe their investigation, analyze the root cause of the vulnerability, detail how the exploit leveraged the vulnerability to gain code execution after boot, and explain how the vulnerability was mitigated. 

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On June 9, join the Citizen Lab’s Emile Dirks to discuss China’s influence, interference, and repression in Canada.

In this online session hosted by the Canada China Forum, Emile Dirks, senior research associate at the Citizen Lab, and Bradley Jardine, managing director of Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs, will explore the PRC’s lawful and unlawful influence practices, the fine line between influence and interference, as well as how the international society should respond to China’s advancements.

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