Organizer: Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY
Description:
The ascendancy of authoritarianism around the world is facilitated by powerful new surveillance tools, new modes of censorship, and legal regimes that have failed to keep pace with technological change. Join Ron Deibert, cybersecurity expert and director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, and Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, for a discussion of the rise of digital authoritarianism and the fight for our democratic freedoms. The discussion will be informed by Deibert’s just-released book, Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy, which addresses the marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. Prof. Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism, will introduce and moderate the discussion.
Copies of Chasing Shadows will be available for purchase and post-discussion signing.
About the SPeakers:
Ronald J. Deibert is the founder and director of the Citizen Lab, a world-renowned digital security research center at the University of Toronto. The bestselling author of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society and Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet, he has also written many landmark articles and reports on espionage operations that infiltrated government and NGO computer networks. His team’s exposés of the spyware that attacks journalists and anti-corruption advocates around the world have been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and other media. Deibert has received multiple honors for his cutting-edge work, and in 2022 he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada—the country’s second-highest honor of merit.
Jameel Jaffer is the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Under his leadership, the Institute has filed precedent-setting litigation, undertaken major interdisciplinary research initiatives, and become an influential voice in debates about the freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age.
Sheila Coronel is the Toni Stabile Professor of Professional Practice in Investigative Journalism and the Director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. Coronel began reporting in the Philippines during the twilight of the Marcos dictatorship, when she wrote for the underground opposition press and later for mainstream magazines and newspapers. As Marcos lost power and press restrictions eased, she reported on human rights abuses, the growing democratic movement and the election of Corazon Aquino as president. In 1989, Coronel and her colleagues founded the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Under Coronel's leadership, the Center became the leading investigative reporting institution in the Philippines and Asia. In 2001, the Center’s reporting led to the fall of President Joseph Estrada. In 2003, Coronel won Asia’s premier prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.
Registration:
To attend the event in person, please register here.
Co-sponsors: the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism, Knight First Amendment Institute, Brown Institute for Media Innovation, and the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, at Columbia University, the NYU Democracy Project, and the New York Southeast Asia Network.