Chasing shadows with The Citizen Lab

Summary

Click Here Podcast — "Chasing Shadows with The Citizen Lab"

Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Guest: Ron Deibert, founder and director of The Citizen Lab
Release Date: February 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the story of Ron Deibert, the founder of The Citizen Lab, and his journey from humble beginnings in Vancouver to heading one of the world’s most respected internet watchdog organizations. The podcast explores the original promise of the internet versus its realities, the origins and impact of The Citizen Lab, and the lab's high-profile work exposing government and corporate abuses of technology worldwide.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Ron Deibert's Origins and Motivation

• Unlikely Beginnings

  • Raised in a tough neighborhood in Vancouver; father was a mechanic, mother a housewife.
  • “Most of the people that I hung out with... ended up either in some kind of organized crime or in jail.” – Ron Deibert (01:40)
  • Education was not prioritized; only book in the house was an unopened Bible (01:55).

• Early Influences

  • As a child, became fascinated watching the Watergate hearings on TV.
  • Profound early insight: "Systems don't always erase the truth. Sometimes they just bury it." – Dina Temple-Raston (02:44)
  • Developed an aversion to bullies and injustice, a major driver in his later work.
    • “I witnessed bullying and intimidation firsthand growing up. I don’t like bullies, especially when they get away with hurting innocent people.” – Ron Deibert (03:09)

The Birth of The Citizen Lab

• Discovery of a New Calling

  • Entered university as one of the few from his neighborhood, initially studying Soviet politics.
  • A mentor suggested he focus on the “telecommunications revolution” instead (07:35).
  • “A light bulb just went off.” – Ron Deibert (07:35)
  • Saw the early internet as a utopian vision but was skeptical about its potential misuse.

• Flipping Surveillance

  • Developed the idea: If governments use technology to watch citizens, why not watch governments using the same tech?
    • “Let’s find out what’s going on beneath the surface of the Internet that citizens need to know about.” – Ron Deibert (09:10)

• Founding the Lab

  • Secured a clandestine basement space at University of Toronto—“their little hacker hothouse” (10:01).
  • First hire: Nart Villeneuve, a self-taught hacker, crucial to early successes.
    • “He told me he couldn’t believe that someone was paying him to do what he would have gladly done for free.” – Ron Deibert (10:27)

Major Investigations & Breakthroughs

• Documenting Censorship and Surveillance

  • Nart pioneered techniques to access the internet from inside censored countries like China and map what was blocked (11:33).
  • Published reports on internet censorship in authoritarian regimes, building an international reputation.

• The “GhostNet” Discovery

  • 2008: Investigated malware attacks on Tibetan NGOs. Discovered Dalai Lama’s computers were hacked.
  • Found a spreadsheet listing 1,300 targeted computers in 103 countries, implicating the Chinese government.
    • “We were looking over the shoulders of spies who were involved in a global cyber espionage campaign.” – Ron Deibert (14:09)
    • “We just looked at each other like, what the hell? What do we do with this? This is unbelievable.” (14:37)
  • Their report made global headlines and changed the public understanding of cyber espionage.

• Making Enemies

  • Their work made them unwelcome in China, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and even made democratic governments uneasy.
    • “Surveillance isn’t just an authoritarian habit, it’s a modern one.” – Dina Temple-Raston (19:35)
    • “If we are to believe what Diebert is saying, we might be next.” – Ron Deibert (20:27)

• Innovation: Siphon Tool

  • Developed anti-censorship software (Siphon), helping users circumvent internet restrictions (20:45).

Unmasking Pegasus Spyware

• Pegasus Discovery

  • 2016: Alerted to a suspicious text sent to UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor. Analysis led to uncovering Pegasus, sold by NSO Group.
  • “Pegasus didn’t need a click. It could infect a phone without the user doing anything at all... take over the device—microphone, camera, everything.” – Dina Temple-Raston (21:55)
  • Published the “Million Dollar Dissident” report, the first public exposé on Pegasus spyware (23:11).

• Global Consequences

  • Their research led to significant action, including President Biden blacklisting NSO Group and curbing spyware use in the U.S.
    • “All of those things you hope would come out of your research were starting to happen... Phenomenal. This is like the Holy grail.” – Ron Deibert (23:37)

Present Dangers and the Road Ahead

• The Rising Tide of Surveillance

  • Recent U.S. government contracts with spyware companies signal normalization of invasive surveillance tools (24:00).
  • “The mission we set up for ourselves... is now at the greatest risk it’s ever been in the last 23 years.” – Ron Deibert (24:42)
  • Expresses concern about global ripple effects—authoritarian regimes may be emboldened by the U.S.

• Call to Action

  • “That work doesn’t start in labs or courtrooms. It starts with the rest of us paying attention.” – Dina Temple-Raston (26:08)
  • Ron warns, “We’re in for a very dark period... Our mission now takes on a new meaning in this environment.” (25:57)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On becoming an accidental cyber watchdog:

  • “I don’t like bullies, especially when they get away with hurting innocent people.” – Ron Deibert (03:09)

• On the revelation of GhostNet:

  • “We were looking over the shoulders of spies who were involved in a global cyber espionage campaign.” – Ron Deibert (14:09)

• On the unexpected impact of Citizen Lab:

  • “A lot of smart people said, ‘Wow, I had no idea that my computer... could also, in the very next minute, be looking back at me.’” – Ron Deibert (15:23)

• On the normalization of commercial surveillance:

  • “I could very well foresee aggressive litigation efforts coming at us and other groups to try to shut us down.” – Ron Deibert (24:42)

• On the urgency for civic awareness:

  • “That work doesn’t start in labs or courtrooms. It starts with the rest of us paying attention.” – Dina Temple-Raston (26:08)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:51 — Introduction to Ron Deibert and Citizen Lab
• 01:27 — Ron’s upbringing in Vancouver
• 02:16 — Early inspiration from Watergate hearings
• 07:11 — Academic pivot to technology and the internet
• 09:10 — Deciding to “watch the watchers”
• 10:01 — Founding the Citizen Lab “hacker hothouse”
• 11:33 — Breakthroughs in detecting Chinese censorship
• 12:26–14:37 — The “GhostNet” investigation and its fallout
• 19:35 — Making enemies abroad and at home
• 20:45 — Launching the Siphon anti-censorship tool
• 21:33–23:11 — The Pegasus spyware exposé
• 24:42 — Threats to Citizen Lab’s mission and the future of surveillance
• 26:08 — Closing call to civic engagement

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Episode Tone & Style

• The tone is personal, investigative, and urgent—blending narrative storytelling with accessible explanations of complex privacy and security issues.
• Both Deibert and Temple-Raston avoid jargon, focusing on vivid anecdotes and real-world impacts.

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Further Resources

• Ron Deibert’s Book: “Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy”
• Citizen Lab: citizenlab.ca

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This episode offers a gripping behind-the-scenes look at how the fight for digital rights is waged, why vigilance is needed more than ever, and what’s at stake for civil society globally.

Transcript

[Dina Temple Raston]

From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. It's hard to even talk about the Internet as if it's just one thing, because depending on when you first logged on, it can mean completely different things. For some, it's this. It was a tool of the Pentagon. For others, it's you've got mail or pets.com, because pets can't drive. And now, of course, there's AI I

[Weight Watchers Advertiser]

can speak in any language.

[Ron Deibert]

Sorry, I didn't quite get that.

[Dina Temple Raston]

And one of the people on the front lines of this, a kind of Forrest Gump of the Internet, is a Canadian named Ron Deibert. Ron runs something called the Citizen Lab, and at its most basic level, it's a research center that investigates how governments, corporations, and bad actors use technology to do very grim things. Which is interesting because if you knew Ron as a kid, you wouldn't exactly think, hmm, future cybersecurity watchdog. Can you talk a little bit about growing up in Canada and your upbringing?

[Ron Deibert]

Sure. I don't get asked that question very often. I had an unlikely origin story for where I ended up.

[Dina Temple Raston]

His dad was a mechanic. His mom was a housewife.

[Ron Deibert]

I grew up in a hardscrabble part of Vancouver. Most of the people that I hung out with that I went to school with ended up either in some kind of organized crime or in jail.

[Dina Temple Raston]

In school, that wasn't really a priority.

[Ron Deibert]

There wasn't a lot of higher education in my family. We had one book in the household that was a Bible that was never opened.

[Dina Temple Raston]

But they did have a television, multiple TVs, in fact, and Ron watched everything. Then one day, when he was just nine years old, he stumbled on this.

[Ron Deibert]

The first one is the break in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Washington.

[Dina Temple Raston]

The Watergate hearings.

[Ron Deibert]

What did the President know and when did he know it?

[Dina Temple Raston]

As he and his family watched the hearings day after day, Ron got his first glimpse into the world of power and corruption and secrecy.

[Ron Deibert]

We have a cancer within, close to the presidency that's growing.

[Dina Temple Raston]

And he came to the realization that systems don't always erase the truth. Sometimes they just bury it.

[Ron Deibert]

Because people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.

[Dina Temple Raston]

An understanding that would come to define his life's work, because in a sense, Ron actually was built to fight these kinds of things. It stirred something in him, something he learned on the streets of Vancouver.

[Ron Deibert]

I witnessed bullying and intimidation firsthand growing up. I know what it's like. I don't like bullies. I especially don't like bullies, getting away with things and hurting innocent people.

[Dina Temple Raston]

He couldn't have predicted just how important that street sensibility would become for him. I'm Dena Temple Raston and this is Click Here. We tell true stories about the people making and breaking our digital world and today Ron Deibert and the birth of one of the most celebrated Internet watchdog groups in the world. And we look back at the digital world we were promised and the one we actually got.

[Ron Deibert]

You know, there have been great strides made in raising awareness about security risks and some amazing new tools to better communicate securely, like Signal. But against all of that, honestly, it's like we're living in a Philip K. Dick novel.

[Dina Temple Raston]

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[Ron Deibert]

I just was blown away. Reading philosophy, reading history. There's this whole world that was opened up to me.

[Dina Temple Raston]

So he was on track to study Soviet politics, Even planning a Ph.D. when fate intervened, or rather a mentor did. The Cold war is over, he told Ron, so you should probably find a new specialty.

[Ron Deibert]

And he very sagely said, you know, no one's looking at the way he phrased it was the telecommunications revolution. And a light bulb just went off.

[Dina Temple Raston]

It wasn't a turn away from politics that as much as it was moving toward the things starting to shape it. Technology. This was the early 1990s. The Internet was still in the public imagination, at least this boundless utopian space.

[Ron Deibert]

Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away? The enthusiasm around the Internet was very contagious, and I was caught up in it, too. Across the country, gesture ahead without stopping for directions was one story after another about all of these dramatic improvements in how we access information and communicate with each other. Something that was oriented towards more freedom, more democracy. Serious people were talking about it in that way. It'll be impossible for authoritarian regimes to withstand this, you know, tsunami of information.

[Dina Temple Raston]

But Rowan wasn't so sure. He had a sneaking suspicion governments would one day use this technology against their own people. And an idea sprouted. If governments might one day use technology to watch citizens, why couldn't he turn that around and use that same technology to watch governments right back?

[Ron Deibert]

This is a model that could be appropriated by citizens, by scientists, by even academics to watch what governments are doing and hold them accountable. Let's find out what's going on beneath the surface of the Internet that citizens need to know about.

[Dina Temple Raston]

By then, ron had his PhD. He was teaching at the University of Toronto. And as he went around campus, he started keeping an eye out for a place to set up shop and start working on his idea, somewhere where he'd go unnoticed.

[Ron Deibert]

So I identified a building that was under construction, and I actually smuggled myself in while it was under construction and identified a small basement space.

[Dina Temple Raston]

Every detective has an origin story. For Ron, it started in a basement. He called it their little hacker hothouse. And his first hire, a fellow East Vancouver native named Nart Villeneuve, also a

[Ron Deibert]

bit of a street kid himself, had no computer science training, was a self

[Dina Temple Raston]

taught hacker, a guy who loved computers so much, he didn't even consider this a job.

[Ron Deibert]

I found out from our payroll office that many months had gone by and he had not submitted his timesheet to get paid. He told me he couldn't actually believe that someone was paying him to do the work that he was doing, which he would have gladly done for free.

[Dina Temple Raston]

As Ron and Nart sat in that basement blasting heavy metal, Ron's idea began to take shape. What if this could be more than just a hangout? What if it became a research center? One focused on how power uses to technology to watch, to track, and sometimes to silence. And it wasn't just governments, but corporations and the ultra wealthy. Eventually, Ron gave it a name, the Citizen Lab. It turns out Nart had a special gift for this work because he could move through systems without being noticed. All on his own. He'd figured out a way to connect to computers in China and browse the Internet as if he were inside the country without China knowing.

[Ron Deibert]

Something that we do now routinely in the Citizen Lab. But it was the first time I had seen this presented. And what he was doing there was trying to cross check, you know, what web content is being blocked by China.

[Dina Temple Raston]

And inside China's networks, they found exactly what Ron had suspected so many years ago. A government using technology to crack down on ordinary people, not just at home, but abroad as well. Then Nart started poking around in the networks of other authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia and Iran. And he found the same thing there. They began publishing reports about what they discovered, often things that no one had ever seen before. So people started to watch for whatever the Citizen Lab would uncover next. Which could explain why in 2008, Ron got an unexpected call from a researcher,

[Ron Deibert]

a person named Greg Walton, who worked

[Dina Temple Raston]

with activists and NGOs in Tibet. Greg said this weird thing was happening. The activists in Tibet were being flooded with computer viruses.

[Ron Deibert]

Simultaneously, people in those communities were occasionally being arrested. And it seemed like authorities knew in advance that things that they were planning and doing, suggesting that they were under surveillance.

[Dina Temple Raston]

So Ron's team flew to India to meet with the activists.

[Ron Deibert]

And then, with their consent, we effectively wiretapped their machines.

[Dina Temple Raston]

They saw what Greg had been reporting unfold in real time, and it confirmed an alarming truth, that someone had hacked into the Dalai Lama's computers and was spying on them. At first, it wasn't clear how far the operation reached, but then they stumbled onto a little glitch in the code. The hackers had left a clue, a big one.

[Ron Deibert]

They had left a directory wide open, allowing us to see this very well organized spreadsheet that they maintained online of all of the victims that they had compromised.

[Dina Temple Raston]

This is a moment tech detectives dream about, like finding the notebook of a serial burglar. Not just listing every break in, but carefully explaining how each one of them was done. And what they found inside that spreadsheet shocked them. There were IP addresses for some 1300 computers in 103 different countries, many of them systematically compromised by, it turns out,

[Ron Deibert]

the Chinese government, ministries of foreign affairs, diplomatic missions, ASEAN banks. We were looking over the shoulders of spies who were involved in a global cyber espionage campaign. Pena was truly the first of its kind.

[Dina Temple Raston]

Ron had founded the Citizen Lab for exactly this kind of moment. Still, even he hadn't imagined anything on this scale.

[Ron Deibert]

We just looked at each other like, what the hell? What do we do with this? This is unbelievable.

[Dina Temple Raston]

So they wrote a report and then went back to work. Or at least they tried to.

[Ron Deibert]

Well, when the day of that report came out, journalists flooded to the university. There were trucks parked outside of the building. I remember walking up to the lab that morning and seeing, thinking as I'm walking, geez, I wonder what's going on here today? And it was you and it was us. Yeah, we were the biggest story in the world that day.

[Dina Temple Raston]

Their little basement lab was on the front page of the New York Times. And the thing Ron had long suspected about the Internet, the rest of the world began to understand too.

[Ron Deibert]

You know, a lot of smart people said, wow, I had no idea that this could happen, that my computer, which I see as a window to the world, could also, in the very next minute, be looking back at me.

[Dina Temple Raston]

For some, though, Citizen Lab was a little too effective. When we come back, it turns out that they weren't just making headlines, they were making enemies, too.

[Ron Deibert]

This is the same for any investigative journalist who antagonizes powerful people. There are going to be consequences. And maybe I didn't fully anticipate where that would come from.

[Dina Temple Raston]

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[Dina Temple Raston]

You're listening to click here, I'm dina templerest. In the back of his mind, Ron expected his work would make him some enemies. These days, he can't step foot in China. And lots of other governments, the Saudis and the Jordanians, just to name two, aren't that happy with his team's research either. But what he didn't necessarily anticipate was how uncomfortable he would make democratic governments. Because surveillance isn't just an authoritarian habit, it's a modern one. Every government leverages technology to watch people in the name of security, efficiency, or order. What made the Citizen Lab different was that Ron and his team were turning the lens around. They were putting power itself on notice.

[Ron Deibert]

I'm sure that went through their mind. If we are to believe what diebert is saying, we might be next.

[Dina Temple Raston]

And over the next few years, Ron and his crew made a lot more people in power nervous.

[Ron Deibert]

How truly free is the Internet?

[Dina Temple Raston]

Computer researchers in Canada have created what

[Ron Deibert]

some say is the most advanced tool

[Dina Temple Raston]

yet in helping Internet. It's called Siphon. It's a software program that's been created by university researchers in Toronto.

[Recorded Future Advertiser]

Basement computer lab at the University of Toronto.

[Dina Temple Raston]

The citizen lab would go on to expose hacking campaigns targeting dissidents, journalists, lawyers, teachers, governments, corporations, intelligence agencies. No one seemed to be off limits. And then, in 2016, Ron and his team stumbled on something darker. It was one of the most sophisticated and nefarious spyware programs ever created. It began quietly with a single suspicious text message sent to a human rights activist named Ahmed Mansoor in the United Arab Emirates.

[Ron Deibert]

He received a text message on his iPhone that contained a link. Instead of clicking on that, he shared it with Bill Marsak, the lead technical researcher in the Citizen Lab, who set up a system in the lab that allowed him to capture all of those ingredients, including Pegasus.

[Dina Temple Raston]

Pegasus, A powerful piece of spyware sold by an Israeli company called NSO Group. At the time, Pegasus wasn't widely known. But as Ron's team began to take it apart, they realized this wasn't just another hacking tool. This was an escalation. The digital equivalent of going from conventional weapons to nuclear. Most early spyware relied on human error. You click a link, you answer a text, you open the door yourself. Pegasus didn't need that. It could infect a phone without the user doing anything at all. No tap, no click, no warning. And then just take the device over. It can turn on the microphone. Even when you're not using a phone call, just record what you're doing in the room. It can turn on your camera, it can record what's on your screen? NSO had been marketing Pegasus to governments as a very stealthy, high tech way to battle cartels or track terrorists. But the Citizen Lab found that they were using it to target good guys like that activist as well.

[Ron Deibert]

And so that was August 2016. That was the first time we encountered it.

[Dina Temple Raston]

You went out with a report about NSO a short time later?

[Ron Deibert]

Yes. The Million Dollar Dissident report was the first ever report on Pegasus.

[Dina Temple Raston]

People started bringing their phones to the Citizen Lab to get them checked for spyware. And then in 2021, it even got the attention of the White House. Former President Joe Biden announced he was putting NSO Group on a federal blacklist. He signed an executive order to restrict the use of commercial Spyware by the

[Ron Deibert]

U.S. all of those things that you hope would come out of your research were starting to happen, and I just couldn't believe that there were these outcomes. An executive order being put out there by President Biden on commercial spyware. Phenomenal. This is like the Holy grail.

[Dina Temple Raston]

But his celebration didn't last long. Ron says he's increasingly concerned about what he's hearing from the Trump administration. There are new reports that ICE has reactivated a contract with a spyware company called Paragon Solutions, a contract Biden had previously paused. Federal officers rounding up illegal immigrants are using a facial recognition app to try to identify them. For Ron, the concern isn't just these surveillance tools. It's what it a growing willingness to normalize powerful commercial surveillance technologies, not just for national security, but for everyday law enforcement.

[Ron Deibert]

You know, there have been great strides made in raising awareness about security risks and people, you know, documenting Internet censorship and surveillance and cyber espionage. But the very mission that we set up for ourselves, to act as a counterintelligence for civil society, I think that mission is now at the greatest risk that it's ever been in the last 23 years that we've been around. I could very well foresee aggressive litigation efforts coming at us and other groups to try to shut us down.

[Dina Temple Raston]

But Ron's concern doesn't stop just with the Citizen Lab or even with the United States. He's worried about the signal this sends globally.

[Ron Deibert]

All of the gains that we've made are almost certainly now at risk. But there'll be ripple consequences as well throughout the world because of his behavior. It's going to open up the opportunity for oligarchs and dictators around the world to model themselves on that behavior.

[Dina Temple Raston]

In other words, what happens here doesn't stay here. He and I talked before, federal officers had killed two American protesters in Minneapolis, but it felt like he saw it coming.

[Ron Deibert]

We're in for a very dark period, so you know our mission now. It takes on a new meaning in this current environment. We've got a lot of work to do.

[Dina Temple Raston]

That work doesn't start in labs or courtrooms. It starts with the rest of us paying attention. This is Click Here. If you want to learn more about Ron Deibert and the Citizen Lab, check out his latest book, Chasing Shadows, Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy. It's now out in paperback. Click Here is a production of Recorded Future News and prx. Today's show was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch and Casey Giorgi. It was edited by Karen Duffin and Sarah Covedo and Fact Checked by Darren Ancrum. Original music is by Ben Levingston with additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Our staff writer is Lucas Riley, our illustrator is Megan Gough, and our sound designers and engineers are Jake Cook and Jesse Niswonger. I'm Dina Temple Raston and thanks for listening.

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[Dina Temple Raston]

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