Adam

Spear phishing: how to stay safe and prevent advanced attacks against civil society - Access Now Join us to learn and take action to prevent spear phishing and other digital attacks against activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.

MARCH 10: Get practical safety tips from the Citizen Lab's Rebekah Brown at @accessnow.org's Digital Security Helpline webinar on preventing spear-phishing attacks against civil society.

Register: www.accessnow.org/event/digita...

Our latest submission to the Committee on Enforced Disappearance and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances is out now.
We highlight the role of digital technologies; spyware & location-tracking technologies in facilitating enforced disappearances of exiled dissidents

Submissions to the Committee on Enforced Disappearances: And the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances - The Citizen Lab Citizen Lab researchers have co-authored two submissions to the Committee on Enforced Disappearances and UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances.  One submission focuses on digital...

Sarah McKune, @nateschenkkan.bsky.social, an anonymous @citizenlab.ca researcher, @yaqiu.bsky.social & I have co-authored a UN submission on the enforced disappearance of migrants in the context of transnational repression:
citizenlab.ca/submissions-...

The Austrian Ministry of the Interior bought social media surveillance software 'Tangles' from Cobwebs/Penlink and refuses to tell parliament whether they also bought the intrusive Tangles add-on 'Webloc', which relies on the mass collection of personal data from digital advertising and mobile apps.

Cellebrite cut off Serbia citing abuse of its phone unlocking tools. Why not others? | TechCrunch Cellebrite, which makes phone unlocking and hacking tools, stopped sales to countries that allegedly abused its tools. But after new allegations in Jordan and Kenya, the company has changed its approa...

NEW: Last year, Cellebrite stopped Serbia from using its tools after allegations that local police had abused them to hack into the phone of a journalist.

Now there are similar allegations in Kenya and Jordan, and Cellebrite is taking an entirely different approach.

Kenyan authorities used Israeli tech to crack activist’s phone, report claims Citizen Lab report suggests Cellebrite software was used to break into Boniface Mwangi’s phone while he was under arrest

Please read our latest on how Israel's Cellebrite is being used to break into the phone of a prominent pro-democracy activist. This time, in Kenya. Guess who else has access to this tool? (with Carlos Mureithi) cc @rondeibert.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Great to see @nateschenkkan.bsky.social presenting our report “Perpetrators & methods of transnational repression and possible counter strategies” (co-authored w/ @emiledirks.bsky.social @zecsaky.bsky.social & me) in the @afet.europarl.europa.eu

Full report: www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en...

From Protest to Peril: Cellebrite Used Against Jordanian Civil Society - The Citizen Lab Through a multi-year investigation, we find that the Jordanian security apparatus has deployed forensic extraction products manufactured by Cellebrite against civil society devices. We release these f...

NEW REPORT ➡️ “From Protest to Peril: Cellebrite Used Against Jordanian Civil Society”

Our investigation reveals that, since 2020, Jordanian authorities have deployed Cellebrite’s forensic extraction products against civil society targets in Jordan.

Full report here: citizenlab.ca/research/fro...

An image in muted colours showing vague aesthetic animated illustrations of a light-brown-skinned man with curly hair, Black woman with a short afro, and red-headed white woman sitting in various poses on, respectively, a reclined chair, a bench, and a stool, in front of and facing an abstract geometrical image, as if considering it and mid-discussion about it.

The People's Consultation on AI launched today! Whether you have in-depth expertise in AI issues, or don't consider yourself an "expert" but have firsthand experience with AI or its impacts and want to have your say, this is for you. Participate by March 15, 2026: www.peoplesaiconsultation.ca

I wrote about Iran's protests for @theatlantic.com: how AI manipulation and the suspicion of it is being weaponised to dismiss real footage of protests.

This piece draws on work from my stellar team at WITNESS and years of studying information controls in Iran and beyond.

Burned After Reading: Endless Mayfly’s Ephemeral Disinformation Campaign - The Citizen Lab Using Endless Mayfly as an illustration, this highlights the challenges of investigating & addressing disinformation from research & policy perspectives.

1/ Yesterday’s Q2-Q3 Adversarial Threat Report by Meta was interesting in many ways. For us @citizenlab.ca, it was a blast from the past.

For the first time, Meta’s investigators attributed what in 2019 we had named Endless Mayfly - a relentless, sophisticated influence op targeting Iran’s enemies.

USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, accord...

The Trump administration’s decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths from infectious diseases and malnutrition, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Atul Gawande. hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-s...

A Simple WhatsApp Security Flaw Exposed 3.5 Billion Phone Numbers By plugging tens of billions of phone numbers into WhatsApp’s contact discovery tool, researchers found “the most extensive exposure of phone numbers” ever—along with profile photos and more.

Researchers tried plugging every possible phone number into WhatsApp's web app. They found they could collect 3.5 billion users' phone numbers, plus photos for half and profile text for more than a third, the biggest personal data exposure ever by some measures. www.wired.com/story/a-simp...

Law enforcement: we need to break encryption to get access to Signal to protect the children!!

Also law enforcement: for years couldn’t catch a pedophile sex trafficker who used email to coordinate all of his pedophile sex trafficking

A chart showing how well 13 different Android AV apps detect 17 stalkerware products.

EFF teamed up with AV Comparatives to see how well anti-virus apps detect stalkerware on Android phones.

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

Practical Defenses Against Technofascism I gave the Saturday morning keynote at BSidesPDX! I spoke honestly and frankly about the terrifying reality that Americans are facing under Trump's fascist regime, alongside practical advise for commu...

Watch my BSidesPDX keynote where I spoke honestly and frankly about the terrifying reality that Americans are facing under Trump's fascist regime, alongside practical advise for communities to defend themselves micahflee.com/practical-de...

I presume someone just told Trump the Blue Jays are in the world series.

No doubt many of those landlords who "dont have confidence" feel that way because of the backlog at the LTB, something Ford still hasn't fixed.

Not to mention 100+ bike share bike docks within a block of the stadium

We Say You Want a Revolution: PRISONBREAK - An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime - The Citizen Lab We investigate a coordinated network of inauthentic X accounts that is spreading AI-generated content to induce revolt in Iran. The network has been active since 2023, but increased activity during th...

NEW REPORT: We uncovered a coordinated network of fake X profiles that is spreading AI-generated content to induce revolt in #Iran. We call this network “PRISONBREAK”.

Read the report 👉 citizenlab.ca/2025/10/ai-e...

Researchers say Israeli government likely behind AI-generated disinfo campaign in Iran The group leveraged dozens of social media accounts and “routinely used” AI-generated imagery and video to stoke unrest among Iran’s population, according to Citizen Lab.

The group leveraged dozens of social media accounts and “routinely used” AI-generated imagery and video to stoke unrest among Iran’s population, according to Citizen Lab. via @derekbjohnson.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/citizen-lab-...

We Say You Want a Revolution: PRISONBREAK - An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime - The Citizen Lab We investigate a coordinated network of inauthentic X accounts that is spreading AI-generated content to induce revolt in Iran. The network has been active since 2023, but increased activity during th...

1/ NEW REPORT: “We Say You Want a Revolution” - An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime. We call it PRISONBREAK. Keep reading to find out why.

THREAD 🧵

1/Citizen Lab’s new report on PRISONBREAK is a must-read. It exposes an AI-enabled influence operation targeting Iran with deceptive media, from the infamous Evin Prison gates video to deepfake music.

The Golden Age of Transnational Repression | Journal of Democracy Authoritarian regimes are targeting exiles and diaspora communities in more places than ever before. Activists, journalists, and regular people living abroad must watch their backs…

New today: my essay in @jodemocracy.bsky.social on The Golden Age of Transnational Repression: www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/the...

here we stand and here we fight

Digital transnational repression and the limits of international human rights law in a ‘post-territorial’ world Traditional models of jurisdiction fail dissidents in an ever more connected world

A few (early) thoughts on digital transnational repression and extraterritorial human rights obligations over at @bindinghook.bsky.social. Thanks for the opportunity to share my research (again!).

To state the obvious, I was not paid by the Ford Foundation or Open Society to write the column, which is what Vance is alleging and he's saying he is going after those groups. Not the first time he's spouted conspiracy theories involving the Soroses to deflect criticism: apnews.com/article/jd-v...

Researchers find spyware on phones belonging to Kenyan filmmakers FlexiSPY, which is commercially available, can be more easily detected than far more expensive mercenary spyware available to nation states but has similar capabilities once installed, said John Scott...

Forensic researchers @citizenlab.ca today confirmed FlexiSPY spyware was found on 2 Kenyan filmmakers' phones. Victims helped produce a documentary about youth uprisings in the increasingly autocratic country. Spyware was installed while phones were in police custody. therecord.media/researchers-...

Spyware installed on Kenyan filmmakers' phones in police custody - Committee to Protect Journalists New York, September 10, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely alarmed by the installation of spyware on two Kenyan filmmakers’ phones while the devices were in police custody, and calls...

NEW: Spyware installed on Kenyan filmmakers' phones in police custody @citizenlab.ca confirms cpj.org?p=516177