SecTor 2026 – Toronto — Citizen Lab director Ron Deibert had a stern warning for the world about the rise of commercial spyware and surveillance, and how the US government and technology companies are driving it.
During his keynote address at the SecTor 2026 conference, Deibert opined that the Trump administration and the technology leaders that have allied themselves with the US president are pushing an authoritarian agenda and "techno-fascism" movement.
"I've been studying authoritarianism my entire life. Political science is my area of expertise. And what is going on in the United States ticks every single box," he told the audience.
Deibert spent much of his time outlining the various commercial spyware cases that Citizen Lab researchers have investigated and uncovered over the past decade. These include the infamous use of NSO Group's Pegasus spyware against friends and family members of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post journalist and political dissident who was murdered in 2018 by agents allegedly working on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government.
He criticized many foreign governments for documented abuse of spyware technology against human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents, from Italy to the United Arab Emirates. But Deibert reserved his most scathing critiques for Canada's neighbor to the south, highlighting what he described as "the precipitous descent into authoritarianism in the United States" as the government expands a broad surveillance net over the country and uses AI technology to spread what he calls "slopoganda."