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.

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

Amnesty International says Serbia’s secret service and police have been spying on journalists and opposition activists by installing spyware on their mobile phones.

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