Chasing Shadows with Ronald Deibert and Ellen Nakashima

From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, the Citizen Lab has evolved into the world’s foremost digital watchdogs, uncovering dozens of cyber espionage cases in countries around the world.

In his new book Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy, Ronald J. Deibert, the founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, reveals the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance he has devoted his career to exposing.

Tonight, Ellen Nakashima, award-winning national security reporter with The Washington Post, will interview him about how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere. They’ll explore the dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion where autocrats and dictators peer into their targets’ lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. And they’ll discuss the price that the activists, opposition figures, and journalists who advocate for basic political rights and freedoms pay in this pursuit, when they come into the same sinister crosshairs that plague the victims they work to protect.

Chasing Shadows will be available for sale and signing after the event.

Hybrid program (virtual and in-person). The in-person event will have open seating available on a first-come, first-serve basis.