Worth Repeating Cyber Defenders: Protecting Human Rights Online
New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast
01/13/22
•37m
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We live in an always on, hyperconnected, digital society. Almost every aspect of our lives now has a virtual element, which means we leave endless trails of data to be hoovered up for good and for evil. Unfortunately, some of the results include cybercrime, illegal spying, harassment, cyber intimidation and identity theft.
It’s bad enough when these activities are aimed at you or me; much worse when they target dissidents, crusading journalists, citizens who are pushing back against government oppression. That’s where Ronald Deibert and the Citizen Lab at Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto come in. Ron and his colleagues are in the business of fighting back, using cutting-edge technologies to protect citizens and civil society from digital predators.
Listen as Ron, a finalist for the 2021 Tallberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize, explains how Citizen Lab does the voodoo they do so well.
Previous Episode
Worth Repeating: Escaping the Taliban
January 6, 2022
•27m
The Taliban's surge to power in Afghanistan is one of those events that will have repercussions for years to come. Geopolitical, strategic, military, perhaps religious, but most importantly, humanitarian. We all watched in horror as hundreds of thousands of women, men, and children tried to flee what seems likely to be a re-imposition of the Taliban's brutal pre-modern style of ruling.
Jamila Afghani, our guest this week, succeeded in getting out with her family. Jamila is an educator, a leader, and an activist. Her work to elevate the rights and improve the education of women and girls is based on her studies of Islamic law, which she believes is typically misinterpreted to give them second-class status. Jamila is also a past winner of the Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership Prize.
Listen as Jamila talks about escaping the Taliban, and what she expects for her country.
Next Episode
Are the Bad Guys REALLY Winning?
January 20, 2022
•31m
Whether we like it or not, global politics today is defined by confrontation—which could lead to conflict—between autocracies and democracies. However, unlike the great geopolitical divisions of the past, the new dividing lines are not ideological or ethnic or religious or economic. Rather, the two camps are defined by how their leaders come to and maintain themselves in power. The autocracies seem to have figured out they have much in common, including fear of democracy, and translate that understanding into effective mutual support. Ironically, the democracies spend considerable energy criticizing each other, emphasizing their different approaches to issues like immigration, climate, trade, etc.
Not surprisingly, as historian and journalist Anne Applebaum wrote in the Atlantic in November: “The Bad Guys are Winning.” As she put it, "If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse.”
With Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, Belarus dumping Middle East migrants in Poland and Lithuania, China threatening Taiwan (as well as countries like Lithuania and Australia who dare to disagree with Beijing) these are potentially life and death issues. Listen as Applebaum discusses how this new world (dis) order might evolve.
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