So, this article is kind of a silly puff piece but the Citizen Lab has a strong track record. It was the key part of a project called the OpenNet Initiative [1

So, this article is kind of a silly puff piece but the Citizen Lab has a strong track record. It was the key part of a project called the OpenNet Initiative [1] which was in, in its day, the most comprehensive catalog of state-sponsored Internet censorship activities. It basically involved creating lists of sensitive web pages in various categories and then systemically trying to access them from within as many countries as possible, to see what was blocked and how it evolved over time. They have done a lot of original research on what commercial tools are used by repressive governments to spy on or otherwise compromise the online activities of their citizens. [2] They were instrumental in documenting and exposing GhostNet. [3] They published one of the first comprehensive research reports on the extent of surveillance on TOM-Skype (basically "Chinese Skype"). They have done critically important research / investigative journalism on exposing the activities of CSEC, Canada's equivalent of the NSA, in spying on Canadians. [4] Citizen Lab is like a combination of a security / threat research consultancy with an international relations thinktank that lives at a university. If this article seems like vague claptrap, it's because it's kind of difficult to describe their mission. They are a skeleton crew operation that is highly driven by the interests of the handful of researchers working there at any given time. Disclaimer: I did a very small amount of totally insignificant work for them in 2010 as a undergraduate student at U of T. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNet_Initiative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNet_Initiative [2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/netsweeper-bahrain-government-internet-censorship-1.3769803 http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/netsweeper-bahrain-governm... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet [4] http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christopher-parsons-canada-has-a-spy-problem http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christopher-parson...