Google has today announced the launch of a new ‘Android Intrusion Logging’ feature as part of Android Advanced Protection Mode (AAPM). The new intrusion logging feature promises to be a major aid to digital forensics researchers undertaking investigations into sophisticated attacks on Android devices. This is the first time a major device vendor has release a feature specifically to enhance the ability to forensically detect and respond to advanced digital threats.

A new Amnesty International investigation has established that Predator spyware was used in 2024 to target Teixeira Cândido, a prominent Angolan journalist, press freedom activist, jurist and former Secretary General of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists (SJA). 

A new investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab has discovered evidence that the Predator spyware was used in 2024 to target Teixeira Cândido – an Angolan journalist, jurist, press freedom activist, and former Secretary-General of the Syndicate of Angolan Journalists (Sindicato dos Journalists Angolanos). This is the first forensically confirmed case of the Predator spyware being used to target civil society in Angola. 

The “Intellexa Leaks”, a new investigation published jointly by Inside Story, Haaretz and WAV Research Collective, presents troubling revelations about the surveillance company Intellexa and its signature product Predator, a form of highly invasive spyware that has been linked to human rights abuses in multiple countries.

Authoritarian governments of the twentieth century might have required a network of thousands of employees and informants to track their opponents. Today, the same level of surveillance can be achieved with just a few clicks through spyware, a tool that can turn any smartphone into a 24/7 surveillance device.

Responding to a Lighthouse Reports publication documenting how First Wap, a surveillance company registered in Indonesia, has allegedly been covertly selling its products to state and private actors by exploiting gaps in export control regulations, Elina Castillo Jiménez, Advocacy and Policy Advisor for the Security Lab at Amnesty International, said:  

Our September report “Shadows of Control” revealed that Pakistan is running a huge unlawful surveillance and censorship system. Built with foreign tech and carried out without warrants and safeguards, this is enabling human rights abuses on a massive scale. The report underscores the urgent need for stronger safeguards, greater transparency, and robust accountability mechanisms, all grounded in a human-rights based approach, to prevent the further erosion of digital and human rights in Pakistan and beyond.

On 6 August, the Pakistani authorities announced they were shutting down mobile internet services in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province.  

Journalists in Pakistan are routinely subject to harassment, arrests and even enforced disappearances. In this backdrop, journalists are also reporting experiencing a high level of surveillance, both online and offline.

Pakistan’s unlawful mass surveillance and censorship expansion is powered by a nexus of companies based in Germany, France, United Arab Emirates (UAE), China, Canada, and the United States, Amnesty International said today in a new report “Shadows of Control”. The year-long investigation was carried out in collaboration with Paper Trail Media, DER STANDARD, Follow the Money, The Globe and Mail, Justice For Myanmar, InterSecLab and the Tor Project.

Responding to the publication of a Citizen Lab report identifying Italian journalist Ciro Pellegrino and another who has chosen to remain anonymous, as the latest targets of Paragon’s spyware in Europe, Elina Castillo Jiménez, Advocacy and Policy Advisor on targeted surveillance at Amnesty International, said: 

Responding to a ruling that spyware maker NSO Group must pay more than USD167 million in damages to Whatsapp, Rebecca White, Amnesty International’s researcher on targeted surveillance, said: