CIS Cybersecurity Series (Part 18) – Lobsang Gyatso Sither

“The digital arms trade and the digital arms race, that is going on right now is a huge problem, in terms of what is happening around the world. A lot of people talk about digital arms like it’s just digital technology; it’s just surveillance technology; it’s just censorship technology; it’s just technology; it doesn’t kill anyone, but the fact of the matter is that it does kill. It’s as bad as a gun; it’s as bad as a weapon. It's the same thing in my opinion and it has to be restricted; it has to be curtailed, it has to be controlled so that it doesn’t go to places where there are no human rights and where there are rampant human rights violations. People know what it is going to be used for and it is going to be used for human rights violations and that is something that has be kept in mind before the whole aspect of digital arms trade and it has to be treated as any other arms trade.”

Centre for Internet and Society presents its eighteenth installment of the CIS Cybersecurity Series. 

The CIS Cybersecurity Series seeks to address hotly debated aspects of cybersecurity and hopes to encourage wider public discourse around the topic. 

Lobsang Gyatso Sither is a Tibetan born in exile dedicated to increasing cybersecurity among Tibetans inside Tibet and in the diasporas. He has helped to develop community-specific technologies and educational content and deploys them via training and public awareness campaigns at the grassroots level. Lobsang works with key communicators and organizations in the Tibetan community, including Voice of Tibet Radio and the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy.

This work was carried out as part of the Cyber Stewards Network with aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.