Amnesty International: Cellebrite halts product use in Serbia following unlawful surveillance report

Cellebrite has announced that it will stop the use of its digital forensic equipment for some of their customers in Serbia, following Amnesty International’s report on the misuse of spyware and mobile forensic products by Serbian authorities to unlawfully target activists and journalists, Amnesty announced.

Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, Head of the Security Lab at Amnesty International, said that “this decision reinforces Amnesty International’s December findings that Serbian police and intelligence routinely misused Cellebrite’s digital forensic equipment outside legally sanctioned processes to target civil society activists and independent journalists critical of the government.”

– Withdrawing licenses from customers who misused the equipment for political reasons is a critical first step. Now, Serbian authorities must urgently conduct their own thorough and impartial investigations, hold those responsible to account, provide remedies to victims and establish adequate safeguards to prevent future abuse. This important finding demonstrates that Cellebrite’s due diligence processes should be revamped to ensure its products are not being used to abuse human rights. It is crucial that this is done before reinstating suspended customers or issuing new licenses to any customers in Serbia. Any further exports of surveillance or digital forensics technology to Serbia must be stopped until the authorities have implemented an effective and independent system of control and oversight over any measures that could restrict people’s right to privacy, freedom of expression or peaceful assembly – said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill.

Amnesty International reminds that Cellebrite announced its decision in a statement issued on February 25, 2025.

– After a review of the allegations brought forth by the December 2024 Amnesty International report, Cellebrite took precise steps to investigate each claim in accordance with our ethics and integrity policies. We found it appropriate to stop the use of our products by the relevant customers at this time – Cellebrite stated.

It added that it takes “seriously all allegations of a customer’s potential misuse of our technology in ways that would run counter to both explicit and implied conditions outlined in our end-user agreement.”

The Cellebrite UFED suite of products, developed for law enforcement and government entities, allow data extraction from various mobile devices, even without access to device passcodes.

Amnesty International’s report, “A Digital Prison: Surveillance and the Suppression of Civil Society in Serbia,” released in December last year, detailed how mobile forensic products were used to extract data from journalists and activists’ mobile devices, and in some cases enabled the infection of those phones with spyware.

Amnesty International

Cellebrite

Donncha O Cearbhaill

surveillance of activists

surveillance of journalists