Thursday, June 18, 3:45 pm – 4:45 pm
National Cybersecurity Consortium 2026 Conference
BRIDGING SECTORS
SECURING CANADA
Panel: Spyware & Safeguards: Surveillance Tech and the Future of Digital Rights
As Canada modernizes its cyber and public safety capabilities, tensions between surveillance powers and democratic rights are becoming more urgent. This panel examines how advanced technologies (e.g. AI-enabled surveillance, zero-click exploits) are challenging traditional legal and ethical boundaries. Panelists will explore how Canadian research and regulation can shape innovation towards privacy-respecting, accountable solutions for next-generation security tools.
Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammycti/
Tammy Harper is a Senior Threat Intelligence Researcher at Flare focused on ransomware infrastructure, affiliate ecosystems, and the structural evolution of adversary tradecraft. Her work examines how criminal operations adapt hosting models, operational workflows, and emerging technologies to increase resilience. She is a frequent conference speaker analyzing the intersection of decentralized platforms and cybercriminal innovation.
Dr. Christopher Parsons is the Director of Research and Technology Policy at the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario. He leads a team with expertise in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, data governance, identity management, privacy enhancing technologies, technologies used by children and youth, as well as technologies used in the law enforcement and health sectors.
Christopher was previously a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School’s Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, where his research focused on third-party access to telecommunications data, data privacy, data security, and national security. He holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Victoria.
Ronald J. Deibert, (O.C., O.Ont., Ph.D.) is Professor of Political Science and the founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Deibert’s latest book is Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion and the Global Fight for Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2025). In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.” In 2022, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada, the country’s second highest civilian order of merit.
Joel Reardon is an associate professor at the University of Calgary who researches mobile security and privacy issues and data collection done through those devices. He has also co-founded the privacy analytics company AppCensus. He received his Bachelors and Master’s at the University of Waterloo and his Doctor of Sciences at the ETH Zurich.
His work has uncovered widespread privacy violations in mobile apps, including studies on how apps circumvent Android’s permissions system and fail to comply with children’s privacy laws and has been covered by CBC, BBC, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, among other places. His research has received the Emilio Aced Research and Personal Data Protection Award, the CNIL–Inria Data Protection Award, and the Caspar Bowden Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies.
He has advised regulators and policymakers on digital privacy and works to translate technical findings into changes that protect everyday users. He likes bicycling and snowboarding.