23/12/2024 Monitoring
PACE’s Rapporteur for the monitoring of Serbia, Axel Schäfer (Germany, SOC), has today expressed his concern at recent revelations about the surveillance of Serbian journalists and activists.
"I am deeply dismayed at recent findings by Amnesty International and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) that Serbian police and intelligence services are using advanced phone spyware alongside mobile phone forensic products to unlawfully target journalists, activists and others. According to these reports, numerous individuals have had their phones hacked while in custody or under police investigation. Outside of any legal framework or oversight, the Israeli technology Cellebrite was used to extract data from individuals' mobile phones and a locally developed spyware system, NoviSpy, was installed on the devices.
I strongly condemn this practice, which violates the right to respect for private life and can undermine the exercise of other human rights, such as freedom of expression, assembly and association. It also has a chilling effect on the activities of journalists and civil society activists in their role as watchdogs, and undermines confidence in democratic institutions and the rule of law.
In its Resolution 2513 (2023) on Pegasus and similar spyware and secret State surveillance, the Assembly condemned the use of spyware by State authorities for political purposes and stressed that the use of Pegasus-type spyware should be limited to exceptional situations, as a measure of last resort, for serious threats to national security or serious crimes.
I therefore call on the Serbian authorities to stop using highly invasive spyware and digital forensic products to spy on individuals' private lives and communications. The authorities should also provide effective remedies to victims of unlawful targeted surveillance, conduct effective investigations into these abuses, and hold those responsible to account."