SFU professor David Zandvliet says, “As chair of the Sterling Prize committee, I find his work to be both deeply interesting and courageous.” He notes that the work of the Lab, “while innately controversial, challenges complacency around the unethical use of consumer technologies while also speaking truth to power.”

For Deibert, “It’s always good to get recognition for your work, but especially where it’s meant to identify people who are doing things that are provocative,” and who “speak to powerful actors in an unvarnished way.”

Read SFU’s media release.

Full application details available on the OTF website.

Deadline: March 13, 2022

Program Details

• Three, six, nine, or twelve month fellowships available
• Usually offered to postdoctoral students, doctoral students, and experienced researchers with demonstrated ability and expertise
• Monthly stipend of $5,000 USD
• Travel stipend of $1,250 to $5,000 USD, depending on the fellowship length
• Equipment stipend of $1,250 to $5,000 USD, depending on the fellowship length

Applications are open to people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines and can include students and junior to mid-career practitioners. While individuals with diverse and unique backgrounds are encouraged to apply, likely candidates have experience as computer scientists, engineers, information security researchers, software developers, social scientists (e.g., comparative politics; international security), lawyers and law students, data visualization designers, and others.

ICFP at the Citizen Lab

The Citizen Lab co-founded the program with OTF and has been a host organization since its inception. We welcome proposals from fellowship candidates for research projects related to our current thematic areas described below:

Freedom of Expression Online

Information is censored and disrupted by state actors and private companies at the network layer (e.g., network shutdowns, network throttling, Internet filtering, etc.) and the application layer (e.g., content filtering and moderation, government requests for content removal, etc).

Research Objectives: Develop methods for identifying how content is restricted at the technical level, and conduct policy and legal analyses to understand the underlying political economy around the practice and policy of these controls. Evaluate how these information controls impact freedom of expression and other rights. 

Recent Projects

• GFWatch: A Longitudinal Measurement Platform Built to Monitor China’s DNS Censorship at Scale
• We Chat, They Watch: How International Users Unwittingly Build up WeChat’s Chinese Censorship Apparatus

Targeted Digital Threats against Civil Society

Global civil society is under persistent threat from digital espionage enabled by phishing, malware, disinformation campaigns, and other threat vectors. Civil society does not have the same level of resources as governments and the private sector to defend against these threats.

Research Objectives: Document digital threats against civil society groups across regions and communities. Identify technical trends in how groups are targeted. Understand the political context in which these threats are happening, and the impact they have on groups and social movements. Evaluate the efficacy of mitigation strategies available to civil society.

Recent Projects

• Project Torogoz: Extensive Hacking of Media & Civil Society in El Salvador with Pegasus Spyware
• Missing Link: Tibetan Groups Targeted with 1-Click Mobile Exploits

Mobile App Privacy and Security

Mobile applications have become a central means for civil society to communicate, organize, and mobilize. Applications that have amassed huge user populations in some regions of the world remain largely understudied by security researchers leaving users with limited information on their relative privacy and security. 

Research Objectives: Evaluate security and privacy issues in mobile applications with high user bases in communities of interest that have received minimal research attention. When applicable, outreach to companies to present concerns around security and privacy vulnerabilities. Present findings in accessible ways to help users make informed decisions about the tools they use.

Recent Projects

• TikTok vs Douyin: A Security and Privacy Analysis
• Move Fast and Roll Your Own Crypto: A Quick Look at the Confidentiality of Zoom Meetings

Legal, Policy, and Technical Research

Apart from these research areas, we encourage applicants to propose projects that are within the following broad areas (or combinations of the two):

• Legal and Policy Research: Evaluation of laws, policies, and norms related to Internet censorship and surveillance.
• Technical Research: Empirically document technologies and technical practices affecting openness, privacy, and security. This area can include: research and development of software tools, analysis of systems for Internet censorship and surveillance, and data analytics and visualization.

To get a better sense of the ICFP community, you can read about fellows from round one, round two, round three, round four, round five, round six, and round seven.

Apply!

The application process is run by the Open Technology Fund. See their website for details. 

The 2022 application window will be open from January 31 to March 13, 2022. Please note that applications have to be submitted via the OTF website no later than 23:59 (11:59PM) GMT on March 13, 2022. The fellowship window is open once annually. If you have questions about the ICFP and Citizen Lab, email us at inquiries@citizenlab.ca with the subject line OTF FELLOWSHIP.

“It’s an honour to be recognized by Foreign Policy Magazine — an honour which I share with my Citizen Lab colleagues,” Deibert says. “I’m exceptionally fortunate to work with a dedicated and extraordinarily talented team at Citizen Lab to undertake research on digital security and human rights issues.”

Deibert is recognized for documenting the full extent of digital espionage and lifting the lid off the Internet. As the magazine reports, “By closely studying code and computer infrastructure, Citizen Lab researchers turn the tools of surveillance back on the watchers.”

Breaking from tradition, this year Foreign Policy is honouring the award winners as Global re-Thinkers: individuals from around the world who disrupt the status quo and change lives.

“These amazing people are not only rethinking our world, but also reshaping it,” writes Foreign Policy editor-in-chief Jonathan Tepperman. “They defined 2017, and we’re thrilled by the chance to recognize their accomplishments.”

Past honourees include: Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, Salman Rushdie, Banksy, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Steven Pinker, and Martha Nussbaum.

In recognition of his own work or that of the Citizen Lab, Deibert has previously been awarded: the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer award (2015), the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (2014), the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada Award from the Canadian Library Association (2014), the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression Vox Libera Award (2010), and the Northrop Frye Distinguished Teaching and Research Award (2003). In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.”

As Raoof says, “I am very glad with this award and consider it something for all our efforts. The recognition shed lights on the importance of investigative research and evidence-based production of knowledge when it comes to surveillance, privacy, and protecting human rights movements. It shows the crucial contribution of groups like Citizen Lab to the accumulation of open knowledge, and it’s a good reminder that resistance is possible and privacy could be reality.”

The fourth annual awards name Heroes and Villains around the world who have helped or hindered the advancement of human rights.

When Gill, 32, began her work at the Citizen Lab, she discovered there were no universally accepted mechanisms to measure and analyze online censorship, so she developed novel tools to do just that. Now, she and her team are working to capture data on how exactly governments censor webpages in some of the world’s most challenging climates, including Pakistan, Turkey and, Yemen.

As she tells University of Massachusetts Amherst News: “I am honoured and excited to be listed among the Innovators under 35. The award encourages me to continue to push the boundaries in my work on Internet security and censorship measurements.”

Their winning project, “Internet Sehat” (Internet Healthy) Towards Indonesian Information Society, provides high-quality Indonesian online content. The project included a variety of approaches to fostering strong digital literacy skills, such as creating social movement documentaries, producing print literature, and running in-person workshops to develop the capacity of various stakeholders. Partners on the project included the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the Alliance of Independence Journalists, and the Southeast Asia Freedom of Expression Network.

WSIS projects must demonstrate how they help to work towards ICT sustainable development by showing how they meet a series of 17 goals. The ICT Watch Indonesia project gained recognition by showcasing:

• Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
• Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
• Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies

The World Summit on the Information Society Forum is the world’s largest annual gathering of ICT experts and advocates that work towards sustainable development. Read more about WSIS here.

ICT Watch was nominated for the award for their project entitled “Internet Sehat (Internet Healthy): Towards Indonesian Information Society.” The project description is as follows:

ICT Watch is committed to the online freedom of expression and aware of the emerging challenges to it, while continuing to combat online hoax and disinformation by delivering the Indonesian literacy digital, called “Internet Sehat”, to the public. Internet Sehat provides high-quality Indonesian online content under creative-common license, including a series of social media for social movement documentary videos for public screening and discussion. Also included is an updated presentation kit and how-to modules and leaflets for public education. Internet Sehat also delivered through offline activities, such as workshops, to schools, campuses and local communities, simultaneously facilitating multistakeholder engagement and developing capacity of local actors/communities.

ICT Watch has partnered with the Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the Cyber Law Centre at Padjadjaran University, and other government and civil society organizations to facilitate the project.

Read information on the Internet Sehat project, a list of nominated projects, or vote for a winner for the WSIS prizes until April 30, 2017.

In particular, VICE cites the work of Citizen Lab researchers in identifying a spyware threat against United Arab Emirates human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, which was documented as part of the report titled “Million-Dollar Dissident: NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender.” The article goes on to describe Citizen Lab’s recent work, including reports documenting spyware campaigns carried out by government agencies and security firms in Morocco, Bahrain, Ethiopia, and a mass censorship system in China dubbed “The Great Cannon.”

Deibert explained that he started the Citizen Lab in 2001 to document the ways in which technology was changing the flow of information and civil liberties online, and aimed to discover methods to research this effectively.

Read the full VICE Motherboard article.

“This extraordinary group of winners have all focused on the users, striving to give everyone the access, power, community, and protection they need in order to create and participate in our digital world,” said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. “This group has worked tirelessly to bring to life a future where new technologies don’t compromise privacy or safety, or leave anyone behind. We are so proud to honor them with Pioneer Awards, and we’re deeply grateful for the work they’ve done.”

“It is a huge honour and a tribute to all Citizen Lab staff, past and present, to be a recipient of the EFF Internet Pioneer Award for 2015,” said Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert. “It is also very humbling to join a long list of such distinguished award winners who have done so much collectively to work for an open and secure Internet. We are thrilled to see that our impartial, evidence-based research is being recognized by an organization like EFF, which has done so much over the years to promote human rights online.”

The award ceremony was held the evening of September 24 at Delancey Street’s Town Hall in San Francisco.

EFF’s Pioneer Awards, awarded annually since 1992, “recognize the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Previous honorees have included Aaron Swartz, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Richard Stallman, and Anita Borg.” Read more about the Pioneer Awards.

Director Ron Deibert accepted the award with Senior Security Researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire and Senior Research Fellow Claudio Guarnieri. The Citizen Lab was introduced by EFF Global Policy Analyst Eva Galperin, who said that the Lab’s research on Hacking Team was vindicated by the firm’s leaks earlier this year.

Ron Deibert said, “We consider this to be a great affirmation of the work that we’ve been doing.”

Read EFF’s summary of the 2015 Awards presentation.

Photo credit: Electronic Frontier Foundation

The international Quantified Society called for submissions from researchers, academics, journalists, human rights defenders, civil society organizations, and professionals. The selected proposals are intended to increase understanding of Big Data collection, and associated developments in human rights, innovation, and regulation.

ADC will use the funds to research the implementation of a multifunctional card system by the Buenos Aires city government, which aims to use big data in order to become a “smart city,” while Derechos Digitales will study the practice of mass collection of personal information and the ways in which it is used for labor discrimination in Chile by profiling potential employees.

Read more on the Quantified Society grants on the Media Democracy Fund page.