CTRL - Canadian Tech Rights Lab

CTRL is fighting for Canadians’ rights in our digital future.

Our Mission

To use tech, law, research, advocacy, and public engagement to ensure that technology serves the public interest while protecting individual rights.

Our Principles

Our work is guided by the following (th/m)emes, which will evolve over time:

• The internet is real life. Technology has permeated society to the extent that the digital world and real world are just “the world”. Logging off is not an option when work, play, government services, and daily living require internet access.
• Tech rights are human rights. Our existing human rights frameworks should extend into the digital world, and are increasingly important as we wear our technologies on and in our bodies. Constitutional rights should apply to both governments and to the platforms that are big enough to be governments.
• Everything is computers. The idea of the “tech sector” is meaningless when every industry and societal issue has a critical digital component and when so many fields will be disrupted by AGI. We need law and policy that deliberately integrates technology instead of reacting to its impact after the fact.
• AGI is coming. Just because something is hyped doesn’t mean it’s not real. We need to consider how AGIs will fit into government, policing, business, society, and our relationships to the companies that train and gatekeep the AGIs.

Our Projects

We are working on:

• Artificial intelligence in policing, immigration, and national security.
• Searches of electronic devices by police and at borders.
• Private sector data acquired and used by law enforcement and national security agencies.
• Brain-computer interfaces and privacy.

We would like to work on:

• Raising the standard for consent to data collection by advertisers and data brokers.
• Preserving end-to-end encryption.
• Protecting a right to repair.
• Copyright reform.
• So much more.

Get Involved

Whether you’re a technologist, activist, or concerned citizen, we’d love your support.

• Give time. If you have skills, we want them - academics, coders, policy wonks, designers, lawyers, you name it. Ask us how you can help, or bring an idea to us.

• Give money. If you want to see us build out into other areas - strategic litigation, self-defence software, and more - giving money is the best way to make it happen. You can donate by:

  • Coming soon