Cellebrite cuts off Serbia over abuse of phone-cracking software against civil society

Privacy News
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The Israeli company Cellebrite announced Tuesday that it will no longer allow Serbia to use its software, which is deployed by law enforcement worldwide to unlock mobile phones.

The decision comes on the heels of an Amnesty International report in December alleging that Serbian authorities used the powerful technology to secretly break into phones belonging to civilians and then installed spyware.

Cellebrite has been “systematically deployed” in Serbia and regularly targets members of civil society, Amnesty said in its report.

In a statement on Wednesday, Cellebrite said it assesses the national governments it sells its software to on an “annual and ad-hoc basis due to political and cultural shifts.” The company said that after investigating Amnesty’s findings it determined that it could no longer license its product to Serbia.

All it takes is publicity to convince Cellebrite to drop a bad customer? What a shameless company…

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I guess Cellebrite has to pretend to care about human rights to keep up some semblance of a positive public image. It’s kind of like an arms dealer not selling weapons to an authoritarian government after finding out they’re used on civilians, like really what did you think was going to happen.

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I would bet a lot of money what actually happened is that Serbia failed to pay or refused to renew a contract so Celebrate took the opportunity to fabricate a friendly headline.

They continue to work with plenty of abhorrent governments that make Serbia look like Switzerland.

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Imagine all the abuse that hasn’t been reported yet involving Cellebrite.