Sexual assault allegations — apparently from multiple individuals — have been made against a prominent security researcher, prompting his resignation from several public interest organizations he was affiliated with. Morgan Marquis-Boire was an employee of First Look Media until this past September. He was also a technical advisor to organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
Sexual assault allegations levied against high profile security researcher and activist
Previously lauded for his “passion for human rights”
Previously lauded for his “passion for human rights”
is a reporter who writes about law, technology, speech, and democracy. A journalist trained as a lawyer, she has been writing about tech for 10 years.
As part of his public interest work for Citizen Lab, Marquis-Boire researched commercial surveillance software used against domestic violence victims by their abusers. (Earlier this year, he publicly thanked the author of this article for inspiring his work by writing about digital surveillance and domestic violence).
In 2014, Wired published a profile of him calling him “the ex-Googler taking on the world’s spy agencies,” while quoting Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, lauding Marquis-Boire for his “passion for human rights.”
Today, Deibert released a statement acknowledging that Citizen Lab had recently received a report that Marquis-Boire had sexually assaulted an individual back in 2014. The assault, Deibert says, “coincided” with a Citizen Lab event. Marquis-Boire resigned from Citizen Lab shortly before the organization was made aware of the alleged assault, but the organization has taken additional steps to cut ties with him such that they no longer work with him in “any capacity, formally or informally.”
Deibert says that because the victim wanted privacy, Citizen Lab proceeded quietly and out of the public eye. Other allegations against Marquis-Boire have since surfaced on social media, and Deibert’s own statement, which refers to “other accounts,” suggests that there have been multiple alleged assaults over what may be a long period of time.
The Verge reached out to other organizations that Marquis-Boire was affiliated with. “We were recently made aware of sexual assault allegations against Morgan Marquis-Boire, and he resigned from Freedom of the Press Foundation’s volunteer tech advisory board two weeks ago,” says Trevor Timm, executive director. “Out of respect for the privacy of any victims involved, we refrained from publicly commenting at the time, but we take any such allegations very seriously.”
“Morgan Marquis-Boire was a Special Advisor to EFF. We were made aware of allegations against him. We took them seriously. Mr. Marquis-Boire is no longer affiliated with EFF,” says Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF further clarified that Marquis-Boire was in an unpaid advisory position.
First Look Media told Selena Larson of CNN on Thursday that the role he had been hired for had been “phased out,” and that the organization was not aware of any sexual assault allegations.
Update October 13, 2:55PM PT: The article has been updated to include the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s official statement.
Update October 13, 4:10PM PT: The article has been updated to better clarify that Citizen Lab learned of the allegations in September of this year, although the alleged assault itself occurred in 2014.
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