Are Spies, Spyware and NSO Malware tempting Governments during Coronavirus?

We speak today with expert John Scott Railton, an academic and researcher at the internationally renowned Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.  His work focuses on technological threats to civil society, including targeted malware operations, cyber militias, and online disinformation. His greatest hits include a collaboration with colleague Bill Marczak that uncovered the the systematic use of Pegasus spyware to target civil society in several countries, including Mexico and the UAE. Pegasus is developed by the Israeli cyber-warfare company NSO Group and sold exclusively to governments. That investigation also uncovered the first iPhone zero-day and remote jailbreak seen in the wild.

John speaks to us about the importance of remaining vigilant if new technologies including contact-tracing is used in combatting coronavirus.  He also explains what the NSO group is, and speaks about issues surrounding the murders of journalists and dissidents including journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

To learn more about John's work you can go here: https://citizenlab.ca/author/jsrailton/
To read some of Citizen Lab's work on NSO software Pegasus you can go here:  https://citizenlab.ca/2019/10/nso-q-cyber-technologies-100-new-abuse-cases/ 
 

You can watch the clips with Edward Snowden from a TRT WORLD story here: 

and an Al Jazeera story here: 

Thanks to University of Windsor Faculty of Law and students for their support.

Sound editing by OMS Entertainment