The young activist Nikola Ristic is often out on the streets. In early November, he led protests in Belgrade to demand that politicians step down after 15 people were killed when a train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, the second-largest city in Serbia.
According to a report by the human rights organization Amnesty International, on November 3 Ristic was detained by police and interrogated by the BIA, Serbia’s national security and intelligence agency. “It felt more like a persuasive attempt to get me to stop being an activist,” he told Balkan Insight, a publication by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), which interviewed journalists about the Amnesty report.
During the interrogation, Risti’s phone was in another room, where Serbian spyware NoviSpy was then installed on his phone. It was just one of several such incidences, Amnesty found.
Israeli, domestic software
Serbian authorities have long been suspected of using domestic and Israeli software to tap the phones of activists and journalists. But this forensic examination of phones belonging to dozens of activists and journalists now provides solid evidence.
According to Amnesty, the police and BIA unlocked the phones with software by the Israeli company Cellebrite, and then installed spyware such as NoviSpy. This provides the BIA with all contacts on a phone, along with countless screenshots that reveal everything a person does or writes on their device. Even the microphone and camera can reportedly be switched on from afar.
The news of such spying has been explosive after weeks of protests that have seen students blockading universities. Demonstrators accuse the country’s leaders of corruption and incompetence, resulting in the roof collapse at Novi Sad rail station on November 1, just months after it had reopened following several years of renovation.
‘Abolishing critical thinking’
As Serbia’s president since 2017, Aleksandar Vucic has had a tight grip on power for the past 12 years, since becoming deputy prime minister in 2012 and then prime minister in 2014. Although presidential powers are officially limited, Vucic controls the government, judiciary, BIA and elections via his neoliberal Serbian Progressive Party (SNS). He holds sway over the largest media outlets and has the authority to award lucrative state contracts.
Vucic maintains relations with both the European Union and Russia while constantly promising Serbians economic improvements. Lately he has given daily television speeches during which he accuses demonstrators and the opposition of being enemies of state.
The journalist Nedim Sejdinovic told DW that the spyware revelations come as little surprise. “Over the years, the state has spared no expense to achieve one goal: completely abolishing critical thinking,” Sejdinovic said, adding that now journalists and their sources are at risk.
Serbia’s government denies Amnesty’s findings. The BIA declared that it works in full accordance with the law, calling the revelations a “trivial and sensationalist report” unworthy of comment.
Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, a Russia-friendly hard-liner, described Amnesty’s report as a “continuation of the hybrid war” against Serbia. Vulin’s Movement of Socialists party, a coalition partner to the SNS, has called for a law against “foreign agents” based on Russia’s NGO regulations.
Israeli company responds
Cellebrite, whose powerful software is also used by the US domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, confirmed that it has cooperated with the Serbian authorities, but emphasized that the tool is not intended for the kind of use uncovered by Amnesty’s report.
“Should those accusations be accurate, that could potentially be in violation of our end-user license agreement,” chief marketing officer David Gee told the Reuters news agency. In this case, the use of the technology by Serbian authorities could be officially suspended, he said.
Serbia obtained the software at Norway’s expense through the UN Office for Project Services, with the aim of achieving EU standards in the fight against organized crime.
Intimidation of critics
Serbia has negotiated EU accession for the better part of a decade. But that remains a distant goal because of Serbia’s close ties with Moscow, not to mention Vucic’s dismantling of democracy.
“We are currently experiencing a state subordinated to a single political party and the cultivation of a personality cult around Vucic,” Zoran Gavrilovic, director of the Bureau for Social Research think tank, told DW. “The aim of the spying is to discourage journalists and civil society from doing their work.”
Critics say the recent protests by young people are the first time that Vucic’s dominance has been seriously called into question. The University of Belgrade, with nearly 100,000 students and several thousand employees and faculty members, has suspended operations, along with numerous other universities nationwide. Many high school students have also joined the protests.
Vucic has made few concessions. Two Cabinet ministers have resigned in the wake of the roof’s collapse. Some officials have also been arrested as part of the investigations. But these gestures have failed to satisfy protesters, who see Vucic himself as the problem. Men affiliated with the SNS have attacked peaceful demonstrators to provoke conflict multiple times.
Gavrilovic and other Vucic critics fear that repression and surveillance will intensify. “Protests are a celebration of democracy, but our government describes them as subversion, as an imported color revolution like the Maidan,” Gavrilovic said. “In fact, Vucic tolerates neither democracy nor a single critical tone in society.”
This article was translated from German.
