Civil Sector Files Criminal Complaint against Intelligence Agency for Hacking Activists’ Cell Phones

BETAPHOTO/MILAN ILIC

Representatives of ten civil society organizations on Dec. 24 filed to the Special Prosecutor’s Office for High-Tech Crime a criminal complaint against “persons unknown” in the Security Information Agency (BIA) and the Serbian police for, as stated in the document, unlawfully unlocking and infecting cell phones of activists and journalists, using a spyware system.

They told a news conference in Belgrade that Amnesty International had recently presented evidence of widespread use of advanced phone spyware and mobile phone forensic products, which had posed great risks to human rights, freedom of speech and privacy, particularly jeopardizing the work of journalists and activists.

Dusan Pokusevski, from the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, said that a criminal complaint had been filed over suspicion of three crimes: unauthorized collection of personal data, production of and infection with spyware, and unauthorized access to a protected computer, computer network and electronic data processing.  

He also said that the civil sector had requested from the Ombudsman and the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection to open procedures in the matter, while letters had been sent to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe and the special procedures of the UN Human Rights Council.

Nevena Martinovic, from SHARE Foundation, said that during detention or police interviews, activists had been stripped of their cell phones that were then infected to enable extraction of data from mobile devices on a daily basis. An analysis of mobile products, according to her, suggested that data in infected devices were then sent to a server hosted on an IP address which had earlier been associated with BIA.

The news conference was organized by the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, the Belgrade Center for Security Policy, the Civic Initiatives, the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), the Youth Initiative for Human Rights, the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS), YUCOM, Association Krokodil, Partners Serbia, and the SHARE Foundation.