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Citizen Lab director warns cyber industry about US authoritarian descent

Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, one of the most prominent organizations investigating government spyware abuses, is sounding the alarm to the cybersecurity community and asking them to step up and join the fight against authoritarianism. 

On Wednesday, Deibert will deliver a keynote at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, one of the largest gatherings of information security professionals of the year. 

Ahead of his talk, Deibert told TechCrunch that he plans to speak about what he describes as a “descent into a kind of fusion of tech and fascism,” and the role that the Big Tech platforms are playing, and “propelling forward a really frightening type of collective insecurity that isn’t typically addressed by this crowd, this community, as a cybersecurity problem.” ...

Historically, at least in the United States, the cybersecurity industry has put politics — to a certain extent — to the side. More recently, however, politics has fully entered the world of cybersecurity. ...

“If we stay silent when experienced, mission-driven leaders are sidelined or sanctioned, we risk something greater than discomfort; we risk diminishing the very institutions we are here to protect,” Easterly wrote in a post on LinkedIn.  ...

“I think that there comes a point at which you have to recognize that the landscape is changing around you, and the security problems you set out for yourselves are maybe trivial in light of the broader context and the insecurities that are being propelled forward in the absence of proper checks and balances and oversight, which are deteriorating,” said Deibert.

Deibert is also concerned that big companies like Meta, Google, and Apple could take a step back in their efforts to fight against government spyware — sometimes referred to as “commercial” or “mercenary” spyware — by gutting their threat intelligence teams.  ...

Deibert believes there is a “huge market failure when it comes to cybersecurity for global civil society,” a part of the population that generally cannot afford to get help from big security companies that typically serve governments and corporate clients. “This market failure is going to get more acute as supporting institutions evaporate and attacks on civil society amplify,” he said. ...

Deibert is concerned that these threat intelligence teams could be cut or at least reduced, given that the same companies have cut their moderation and safety teams. ...

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/06/citizen-lab-director-warns-cyber-industry-about-us-authoritarian-descent/