Interview with U. of Toronto professor and counterespionage hacker Ron Deibert | Hacker News Reader

Interview with U. of Toronto professor and counterespionage hacker Ron Deibert

theglobeandmail.com

78 pointsjbeales19 comments

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 [2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/netsweeper-bahrain-governm... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GhostNet [4] http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christopher-parson...

The word hacker needs to be adopted in broader context. Hacking is essentially a creative process and not always a malicious activity. I would suggest software developers and makers to change their titles to 'hackers' of various types.

At this point, doesn't the word "hacker" just mean "somebody who is good at computers"?

I think it goes beyond computers, for example you can hack a car engine to run on water instead of gasoline. You can even hack mind, look up hacking consciousness.

Interesting point, but why fight an uphill battle? Wouldn't it be easier to avoid the term "hacker" because of the negative connotation? The importance of "hacker culture" (experimentation, clever solutions, etc) goes far beyond the name.

As someone who reads Hacker News, I understand what you mean by "hacking is essentially a creative process," but wouldn't it be easier to describe it as something like creative security research instead of hacking? "Hackers" will still understand what you mean, and maybe it would be less intimidating to others. Curious to hear other thoughts.

Professor Deibert is highly sensitive to labeling and deliberately chose and insists on denying the use of the bare term "hacker" to categorize Citizen Lab activities, instead preferring terms such as "hacktivism", self-styling himself as a "hacktivist", and his team as "researchers" in interviews and his blog[1].

[1] https://deibert.citizenlab.org/

Exactly. Quote from the article:

>> Ron Deibert has led a team of counterespionage hackers—he prefers “researchers”—...

It's explicitly stated that his preferred term is "researchers", and yet the Globe and Mail appears to go out of their way to sensationalize by first introducing the word "hackers". Upon reading the full article, the use of the term "hacker(s)" is minimal, and used appropriately for what we self-identifying hackers would use it for.

I've become so accustomed to the word being used negatively that it takes a lot of mental effort to notice when it is used in a neutral or positive tone. I still find it fairly annoying that they included the word in the headline, as though to attract more views with a "controversial buzzword". It's true: the word "hacker" has long since been poisoned by the media. They cannot get away with using the term anymore, even with no ill intent. They spent over a decade using the term to rip people and communities apart. The damage is done, and no amount of effort on their part is going to allow them to sound sincere.

We are all hackers at one point of another. Here is one source of the origination of the word http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html

I agree, and that's a fascinating link. I think that "hacker" can be an accurate/valid description, but also a poor marketing choice at the same time.

It's so interesting that 'hacking' has a negative connotation while 'intelligence'[1] has the opposite, even though it should really be the reverse.

[1] Obviously recent news have made this term more negative, but years past, there was nothing wrong with 'intelligence' (at least in my circles)

My favorite hacking tool is a hacksaw :)

"Maker" is a good alternative to hacker though. It describes what people are doing. I suspect software developers want to use "hacker" instead because they actually like the illicit "doing some bad and wrong and so damn cool" connotations that the media ascribes the term.

Hah, I think you're right—my first impression of "maker" is that it's just a bit too "wholesome". "Hacker" also has deep historic ties and, as used in "Hacker News", it's a bit of a programmer shibboleth, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, there's something romantic about having a group identity that's so radically misunderstood by the mainstream world...

But I really don't make anything. More often than not, I'm taking things apart, looking at the guts, and trying to figure out how to use something. Sometimes those things break, and I have to go buy a new one.

I'd suggest rather than "bad and wrong" perhaps try "(curious,) mischievous and subversive". If "hacker" is what one is really referring to, "maker" largely misses significant parts of the whole, for instance when it comes to taking things apart to understand them, and creatively subverting things to do something else than they were originally intended for.

The first picture and the GIF made a quick scroll of this seem very unappealing. No idea who this guy is, but this piece seems like a Hollywood marketing bit.

Citizen Lab is famous for exposing activities of GhostNet, a "Chinese cyberespionage" operation. Which most famously was targeting the Dalai Lama's organization.

> Deibert’s group discovered an exploit in iPhone software ... before even Apple knew about it.

Yup, I know what you mean about the hollywood part.

That was also my first impression.

The main conclusion I drew is that even if it's an article about hackers, it's not written for hackers. It's written for the people who believe great hacking comes from geniuses pensively looking out their windows while dodging shadowy figures in suits.

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