Black Code is being presented as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in New York City. Visit the official site for other cities and dates.
Citizen Lab is a small academic group housed at the University of Toronto's Muck School of Global Affairs who are busy monitoring governments and corporations who are using technology to censor, hack, surveil, and spy on the Internet. Freedom online is under attack, and they seek to protect cyberspace as a liberated and secure domain, a common watering spot in the world's wilderness.
Ronald Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, is a major player in the high stakes battle to make cyberspace safe for human habitation. He uses the term "Black Code" to refer to nation states, militants, and organized criminal groups who are hacking through firewalls, surveilling other computers, and downloading information.
In this scary documentary directed by Nicholas de Pencier, the focus is on the fear and the paranoia which has grown out of the malevolent ways in which technology is changing the flow of information and civil liberties online. There are case studies of Tibetan monks who have been harassed by Chinese surveillance operations, Syrian activists tortured for Facebook messages, Brazilian activists who use social media to expose livestream police activities, and Pakistanis fighting back against violent online campaigns against women. All of these operations challenge our traditional notions of privacy and community.