Serbians 'using new tools to illegally spy on activists'

Police and intelligence services in Serbia are using advanced mobile forensics products and previously unknown spyware to illegally surveil journalists and activists, according to a report by Amnesty International.

- Jon Henley

The report shows how forensic products from the Israeli firm Cellebrite are used to unlock and extract data from mobiles infected with an Android spyware system, NoviSpy.

Serbian officials are using "surveillance technology and digital repression tactics as instruments of wider state control and repression," said Dinushika Dissanayake of Amnesty.

The deputy regional director for Europe said the report showed Cellebrite products could pose "an enormous risk when used outside strict legal control".

Cellebrite's tools for law enforcement and government entities allow data to be extracted from devices including recent Android and iPhone phones, and can unlock them without a passcode.

NoviSpy, while less advanced than highly invasive spyware such as Pegasus, still lets authorities capture sensitive data from a phone and lets its microphone or camera be turned on remotely.

The report documents how Serbian officials used Cellebrite products to enable NoviSpy spyware infections of journalists' and activists' phones, including during police interviews.

A Serbian investigative journalist, Slaviša Milanov, was briefly detained by police in February on the pretext of a drink-driving test.