“A Digital Prison”: Surveillance and the suppression of civil society in Serbia - Amnesty International Security Lab
“A Digital Prison”: Surveillance and the suppression of civil society in Serbia - Amnesty International Security Lab
© Composite image created by Amnesty International using photos provided by SviĆe and Dragan Gmizic
This is the Executive Summary of Amnesty International’s report on surveillance and the suppression of civil society in Serbia. Please click here for the full report in PDF format.
You can read the Executive Summary in Serbian, French or Spanish.
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In February 2024, Slaviša Milanov, an independent journalist from Dimitrovgrad in Serbia who covers local interest news stories, was brought into a police station after a seemingly routine traffic stop.
After Slaviša was released, he noticed that his phone, which he had left at the police station reception at the request of the officers, was acting strangely – the data and wi-fi settings were turned off. Aware that this can be a sign of hacking, and mindful of the surveillance threats facing journalists in Serbia, Slaviša contacted Amnesty International’s Security Lab to request an analysis of his phone.
Amnesty International’s analysis led to two remarkable discoveries. Firstly, forensic traces revealed that a Cellebrite product had been used to unlock his device. Cellebrite, whose forensic tool allows the extraction of all data on a device and which is used by police departments around the world, claim that they have strict policies to prevent misuse of their product; yet, this discovery provides clear evidence of a journalist’s phone being targeted without any form of due process. Slaviša was neither asked for nor did he provide the passcode for his Android device. The authorities did not disclose to Slaviša that they wanted to search his device, nor did they declare any legal basis for such a search. Slaviša still does not know what data was taken from his phone.
The second finding of the analysis was even more extraordinary. Amnesty International found traces of a previously unknown form of spyware, which it has named ‘NoviSpy’. NoviSpy allows for capturing sensitive personal data from a target’s phone after infection and provides the ability to turn on the phone’s microphone or camera remotely. Forensic evidence indicates that the spyware was installed while the Serbian police were in possession of Slaviša’s device, and the infection was dependent on the use of Cellebrite to unlock the device. Two forms of highly invasive technologies were used in combination to target the device of an independent journalist, leaving almost his entire digital life open to the Serbian authorities.
The story does not end with Slaviša. Further research from Amnesty International has unveiled the breadth of digital surveillance in Serbia, including deployment of at least three different forms of spyware, as well as persistent misuse of Cellebrite’s highly sophisticated digital forensics technology.
This report is a case study on how Serbian authorities have deployed surveillance technology and digital repression tactics as instruments of wider state control and repression directed against civil society. Serbia is a paradigmatic case of a system in which such tools can become core enablers of a digital crackdown, likely to be mirrored in other countries and contexts, which may well be happening already.
This report comes at a time of intensifying state repression and in an increasingly hostile environment for free expression and open debate in the country. Serbia has seen several major waves of anti-government protests since 2021, each triggering increasingly harsher response from the authorities – from sustained and vicious smear campaigns against critical non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media outlets and journalists to persistent judicial harassment of citizens organizing peacefully and engaging in political dissent.
In this report, Amnesty International combines extensive interviews with civil society representatives in Serbia, with highly technical digital forensic research to expose the concrete surveillance practices of the Serbian authorities. In revealing these tactics, the report aims to empower civil society efforts to ensure accountability for unlawful surveillance, while peeling back the layers of secrecy and reducing information asymmetry. The opacity of digital surveillance, and a perception of omnipotence and impunity, can drive and embolden a repressive state apparatus to engage in these practices, with a devastating effect on the health of a society as a whole.
The report findings reveal Serbia’s pervasive and routine use of invasive spyware, including NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, alongside a novel domestically-produced Android NoviSpy spyware system, disclosed for the first time in this report. The Serbian Security Information Agency, known in Serbia as BIA (Bezbedonosno-informativna Agencija) and...