University of Toronto, Munk School of Global Affairs

The University of Toronto is dedicated to fostering an academic community in which the learning and scholarship of every member may flourish, with vigilant protection for individual human rights, and a resolute commitment to equal opportunity, equity, and justice. The award provides flexible support to Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, which focuses on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of human rights, information security, and geopolitics. It employs a ‘mixed methods’ approach in its research, combining disciplines such as political science, law, information security, network measurement, and area studies. Citizen Lab’s areas of substantive focus include documenting targeted digital threats faced by civil society, measuring and analyzing network-level and platform censorship and content moderation, and the intersection of national security and digital technology. In addition, Citizen Lab explores emerging, cutting-edge digital accountability topics that shift over time.

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory focused on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of human rights, information security, and geopolitics. Through its pioneering research, the Lab is helping to establish new ways to monitor and analyze the exercise of political power in the digital environment and the human rights abuses that can result. The award provides flexible support to the Lab as it undertakes work in five thematic areas: freedom of expression; targeted digital threats against civil society; public and private transparency in digital data use, retention, and sharing; national security policy; and, mobile application privacy and security. The Lab’s research helps to catalyze and inform company and government policymaking around the world, and is leveraged by a host of advocacy organizations and litigators seeking to improve freedom of expression, privacy and security in the digital environment.

The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs is an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on advanced research and development at the intersection of information communication technologies, human rights and global security. The award supports the Lab’s 2017 Summer Institute on Monitoring Internet Openness and Rights, being held in Toronto, Canada, July 12 – 14, 2017. The Institute brings together a diverse group of experts from traditionally disparate disciplines who are focused on studying technologies and policies that can threaten, or promote, freedom of speech, freedom of association, privacy of communications and online activities, anonymity of online action, and security of digital behaviors. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to share cutting edge research, form collaborative projects, and support a growing community of information control scholars.

Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary research laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab works to identify and reduce threats in cyberspace to civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and journalists. This award supports the Journalism and Information Security project, which seeks to examine the nature and extent of security threats facing journalists, as well as the state of digital security education and training for journalists.

The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the University of Toronto working at the intersection of digital media, global security, and human rights. It is helping to define new ways to monitor and analyze the exercise of political power in cyberspace and the human rights abuses that can result through its pioneering approach to evidence-based, policy-relevant research. The award provides core support to the Lab as it carries out projects grouped under three themes: targeted digital threats against civil society groups; technical measurements of digital information controls and threats to freedom of expression; and information controls and corporate transparency. The Lab's research in these thematic areas serves as a key ingredient in efforts by a host of advocacy organizations and litigators aiming to improve freedom of expression, privacy, and security in the digital environment.