Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert gave a talk at the Berkeley Centre for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) on April 18th, in which he spoke about “Cyber Espionage and Civil Society: A Silent Epidemic.”

After giving an introduction to the Citizen Lab’s work and its mixed-methods research approach, Deibert focused in on one area of the Citizen Lab’s work: targeted digital threats. This area of research concerns espionage as it affects civil society and human rights activists. He goes on to describe the example of the targeting of UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor, which was documented in the Citizen Lab report titled “The Million Dollar Dissident: NSO Group’s iPhone Zero-Days used against a UAE Human Rights Defender.

He uses this example, and others, to make broader observations on the future of cyberspace and Internet governance.

Read more information about the event, or watch a video of the talk.