December 17, 2024
Police and intelligence services in Serbia are using cutting-edge Cellebrite mobile phone spyware to illegally monitor the devices of independent journalists, activists and peaceful protesters in a covert surveillance campaign, according to revelations included in an Amnesty International report.
The Serbian authorities are also using the bespoke NoviSpy spyware system for Android devices to covertly infect phones while activists and journalists give statements to the police or the Security Information Agency (BIA).
“Serbia is a paradigmatic case of a system in which the authorities utilise technology for surveillance, spying and digital repression tactics as instruments of wider state control directed against civil society,” evaluated Amnesty International in its report entitled ‘A Digital Prison: Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society in Serbia’.
The report also highlights how Cellebrite’s mobile forensics products – which are used widely by law enforcement and intelligence services around the world – can pose an enormous risk to those advocating in favour of human rights, environmental protection and freedom of speech, particularly when used without strict legal controls and oversight, said Dinushika Dissanayake, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for Europe.
