Researchers have uncovered “possible links” between Ontario’s provincial police force and an Israel-based military-grade spyware maker called Paragon Solutions, raising questions about the extent and scope of Canadian authorities’ use of cyber weapons.
The new findings were published by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks and identifies digital threats against civil society, and come three years after a parliamentary committee in Canada called for Ottawa to update the country’s privacy laws in the wake of press reports that the national police force was using spyware to hack mobile phone devices. No laws were ever passed to address the controversy.
The Citizen Lab, in a report published on Wednesday, found a possible technical link between Paragon, which sells a spyware known as Graphite to government clients, and entities based in Ontario, Canada, including one that used the address of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP).
This stuff always ends up used well beyond the original intent.
