By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, Dec. 5: The Digital Security Program Director at the Tibet Action Institute, Lobsang Gyatso Sither, made it to the WIRED UK 2021 smart list of 32 innovators on Thursday. The list includes innovators nominated by some of the world’s smartest leaders ranging from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong and human rights lawyer Amal Clooney.
The Tibetan expert told Phayul, “It is an honour for me to be amongst other global change-makers but more importantly through me, the issue of Digital Security threats faced by Tibetans inside Tibet and the diaspora is highlighted. At the same time, the work that we do at Tibet Action Institute which we believe is at the forefront of innovation with regards to Digital Security is validated through this nomination.” Sither was nominated by Ron Deibert who is the Director for Citizen Lab, University of Toronto.
He expressed concerns over the growing cyber threats, “With regards to Chinese hacking offences, it has evolved from the more traditional social engineering targeted email and waterhole attacks to more social media based disinformation and misinformation campaigns. This is not to say that email attacks are not happening. We, at TibCERT have seen through our members a number of email based attacks in the last few months which we have highlighted in our TibCERT quarterly bulletins.”
The WIRED UK list described Lobsang Sither as an “understated superhero” who has pioneered “one of the first civil society computer emergency response teams called TibCERT to share threat intelligence information among NGOs, researchers and activists in the Tibetan community.” He has been working tirelessly against targeted espionage attacks from China against the Tibetan diaspora, especially in Dharamshala.
