Citizen Lab Founder Flags Rise of US Authoritarianism

At Black Hat USA 2025, Citizen Lab founder Ron Deibert reviewed 20+ years of public-interest research into commercial spyware and nation-state cyber-espionage — covering cases such as NSO Group's Pegasus (including a captured zero-day exploit chain), Paragon spyware targeting journalists, a Trojanized backdoor used against the World Uyghur Congress, and historical APT activity like GhostNet — and warned about the societal harms, policy implications, and the continuing cycle of surveillance-driven repression.