The conflict between those who are trying to share information online and those who are trying to shut them down is an arms race. The Citizen Lab are powerful ghostbusters in the fight. The white hats shouldn’t just be heroes in Toronto, but internationally too. And as for the Dalai Lama? Let’s hope Apple opens a store in Lhasa soon.
From Torontoist
Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2009—the very best and the very worst people, places, and things in and of Toronto over the past twelve months. This week, Torontoist unmasks our picks, complete with original art by our illustrators; starting next week, and continuing until the end of the year, you can vote for your favourite Heroes and Villains as they face off in a round-robin–style competition which, at its end, will leave one Superhero and one Supervillain standing.
The Citizen Lab
WRITTEN BY QUIN PARKER; ILLUSTRATED BY ROXANNE IGNATIUS
If you’ve suffered a virus attack on your computer at any point, you’ll sympathize with the Dalai Lama’s plight. His PC was infected with a nasty piece of code that exposed some of his key negotiating documents in talks with China. The Citizen Lab, a interdisciplinary group of computer and political scientists based at the University of Toronto, were tasked with finding out who had compromised his computer, and how. But instead of asking him if he’d turned it off and on again, the Citizen Lab (with the help of partners in Ottawa) managed to clean the infection—and it was no ordinary infection. It was GhostNet, a massive spyware infrastructure that spread across 103 countries and nearly 1,300 machines in embassies, NGOs, the media, and the heart of governments.
In March this year the Citizen Lab presented the findings of the ten-month investigation. Circumstantial evidence made people point their fingers at the Chinese government, who denied everything. Ron Deibert, associate professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, said: “Those of us who care about protecting the Internet as a forum for free expression and access to information need to think about ways to rein in what’s going on there, and even go so far as to think about arms control in cyberspace.”
The conflict between those who are trying to share information online and those who are trying to shut them down is an arms race. The Citizen Lab are powerful ghostbusters in the fight. The white hats shouldn’t just be heroes in Toronto, but internationally too. And as for the Dalai Lama? Let’s hope Apple opens a store in Lhasa soon.
http://torontoist.com/2009/12/heroes_and_villains_2009_heroes.php?gallery0Pic=7#gallery