Darren Laur has dedicated his professional life to public safety, education, and helping young people and the adults who support them better understand and navigate today’s increasingly complex onlife world.

Darren brings more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, having retired as a highly regarded and decorated Staff Sergeant with the Victoria Police Department in British Columbia, Canada. During his policing career, he developed specialized expertise in online investigations, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) collection, and digital investigational techniques. Backed by seven OSINT certifications, Darren is now one of a select number of civilian online investigators licensed and certified by the Province of British Columbia.

As Co-Founder and Chief Learning Officer of The White Hatter, Darren has become a recognized Canadian educator and subject matter expert in internet safety, digital literacy, social media, artificial intelligence, online exploitation, privacy, security, and the evolving relationship between young people and technology. Together with the White Hatter team, he has delivered educational programs to more than 1,000 schools, reaching over 700,000 youth, while also presenting to parents, caregivers, educators, law enforcement professionals, and communities across Canada and the United States.

Darren is also a published author who has written three web books for parents on internet safety and has authored more than 850 articles examining technology, social media, online safety, digital literacy, parenting, education, and emerging technological issues. His expertise and commentary have been featured by media organizations throughout Canada and the United States.

From 2022 to 2024, Darren collaborated with the British Columbia Ministry of the Attorney General and the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal as a digital literacy and internet safety subject matter expert, providing advice during the development and implementation of British Columbia’s Intimate Image Protection Act. He also contributed his expertise to the training of the BC Intimate Image Protection Service.

Darren’s investigative background continues to shape his approach to education. He believes in questioning assumptions, following the evidence, looking beyond the obvious threat, and asking what may be missing from the prevailing narrative. Rather than approaching technology as inherently good or bad, his philosophy is captured by The White Hatter principles “Facts Not Fear,” “Enlighten Not Frighten,” and “Know Tech, Not No Tech.”

Although technology provides the environment for much of Darren’s work, human behaviour sits at its centre. His work examines how trust can be built and exploited, how persuasion influences behaviour, why young people take risks, how technology can amplify both opportunity and harm, and how critical thinking, healthy relationships, education, and resilience can help young people make better decisions.

This philosophy has led Darren’s work beyond traditional concepts of “internet safety” toward a broader understanding of onlife literacy, recognizing that the online and offline worlds young people inhabit are increasingly inseparable. His approach brings together digital literacy, media literacy, AI literacy, persuasion literacy, and human element literacy. Rather than simply teaching young people what not to do, Darren believes they need the skills to recognize manipulation, interrogate information, assess risk, understand consequences, recover from mistakes, and know when to seek help.

At the heart of his work is the belief that real safety is not simply the absence of risk, but the development of capability and resilience. We should not be raising young people who need adults to make every safe decision for them. We should progressively give them the knowledge, judgment, confidence, and skills to make safer decisions for themselves, while ensuring they always know there are trusted adults they can turn to when something goes wrong.

Darren and The White Hatter team have received nine awards recognizing their work, including two international, four national, and three provincial honours. Darren has also been recognized with the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship and membership in the Order of Merit of the Police Forces for his contributions to youth, public safety, internet safety, and digital literacy.

Ultimately, Darren’s work is about more than keeping young people safe online. It is about helping parents, caregivers, educators, and communities raise capable, resilient, critically thinking young people who are prepared for life in a world where technology is increasingly inseparable from what it means to be human.