Amnesty International calls for the Serbian government to end these surveillance practices: Serbian authorities must stop using highly invasive spyware and provide effective remedy to victims of unlawful targeted surveillance and hold those responsible for the violations to account.

Amnesty said it found NoviSpy, an Android spyware linked to Serbian intelligence, on the phones of several members of Serbian civil society following police stops.

Serbian police allegedly used Cellebrite and NoviSpy spyware to compromise a journalist's phone, exploiting a CVE-2024-43047 vulnerability.

As tech companies make it harder to infect phones remotely, governments are using physical access to the devices of activists to insert spyware programs.

In two cases, software provided by Israeli surveillance company Cellebrite DI Ltd CLBT.O was used to unlock phones prior to infection, the report said.

Serbian police and intelligence services are reportedly using advanced mobile forensics products and spyware to illegally monitor journalists and activists. According to a report by Amnesty International,

Serbian authorities have rejected the claims they used forensic tools from Israeli company Cellebrite and bespoke spyware for illegal surveillance, calling them "nonsensical". #EuropeNews