Cellebrite's Selective Scrutiny: Why Serbia Was Cut Off While Other Abusive Clients Remain

In February 2025, Israeli tech firm Cellebrite suspended its services to Serbia. The move followed an Amnesty International report detailing how Serbian security services used Cellebrite’s phone-hacking tools to target journalists and activists. Human rights groups called it a win. But that victory highlighted a more troubling pattern: Serbia is just one of many governments accused of misusing Cellebrite’s technology, and the company’s silence on the others speaks volumes.

Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) is a powerful tool sold to law enforcement. It can pull data from locked phones. The company says it vets clients and upholds human rights standards. Yet its products have been found in the hands of authorities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Russia, China, and Venezuela—nations often cited for political repression. In these places, the technology has been linked to the surveillance of dissidents and the press.

So why act on Serbia and not the rest? Analysts point to a mix of commercial pressure and calculated risk. Serbia’s security market is small. Cutting off larger, lucrative clients in the Gulf or elsewhere would hurt the bottom line of a publicly traded company that earned over $300 million last year. The Amnesty report on Serbia was also uniquely specific, tying Cellebrite tools directly to named agencies and documented abuses—creating a public relations crisis the company felt compelled to address.

Donncha Ó Cearbhaill of Amnesty’s Security Lab put it bluntly to TechCrunch: “The question is why the same standard is not applied everywhere.” The case exposes the inherent conflict in the surveillance tech industry: companies profit from selling capabilities to governments, then often disclaim responsibility when those tools are turned against civilians. Cellebrite’s action in Serbia, while positive, sets a precedent it now seems unwilling to follow elsewhere. Without uniform enforcement of its own ethics policies, the company’s commitment to human rights remains in question.