This blog post was written as part of the Digital Forensics Fellowship by one of the 2022-2023 Fellows. 

The Security Lab at Amnesty International works to investigate and document rights abuses linked to spyware and surveillance technology alongside other digital threats facing civil society. If you have relevant information about surveillance abuses enabled by technology you can contact us securely below.

For many of us, that unsettling feeling of being watched is all too real. After all, we live in a world of mass surveillance, from facial recognition to online tracking – governments and technology companies are harvesting intimate information about billions of people. Targeted surveillance is slightly different. It’s the use of technology to spy on specific people.   Targeted surveillance can include the use of hidden cameras, recording devices, or being physically followed or monitored. Here at Amnesty’s Security Lab, we focus on uncovering targeted digital surveillance including spyware, phishing and other digital attack techniques.   Governments across the world are buying and allowing the sale of advanced highly invasive spyware that can compromise anybody’s digital devices and monitor their activity. These tools are made and sold by private companies who are profiting from human right abuses.   Governments and companies say that these surveillance tools are necessary to target ‘criminals and terrorists’. But in reality, scores of human rights defenders, journalists and many others – including Amnesty International staff members – have instead been unlawfully targeted with spyware.  

The Security Lab offers digital forensics support to at risk human rights defenders and civil society organisations. If you have serious concerns that you or your devices may be targeted by spyware or other digital threats, you can contact us.

The Security Lab develops and maintains a range of digital and mobile forensics tools to empower forensic experts and civil society technologists to identify evidence of unlawful surveillance or other digital attacks targeting journalists and human rights defenders. These tools, such as the Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT) and AndroidQF continue to be developed by the Security Lab and the community.

Responding to today’s vote by Members of the European Parliament urging the European Union (EU) to more tightly regulate the use, manufacture and trade of spyware, Rebecca White, campaigner at Amnesty Tech’s Disrupting Surveillance Team, said: 

Ahead of today’s opening of RightsCon, a summit on human rights in the digital age, which takes place in San José, Costa Rica, Rasha Abdul Rahim, Director of Amnesty Tech, said:  

A joint investigation has revealed that at least twelve Armenian public figures and officials, including journalists and human rights defenders were targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware amid conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, between October 2020 and December 2022.  Evidence from the investigation, conducted with Amnesty International’s Security Lab, Access Now, the Citizen Lab, CyberHUB-AM, and an independent mobile security researcher Ruben Muradyan suggests that the conflict may have been the reason for the targeting.

A high-profile woman journalist in the Dominican Republic has been targeted with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, in the first confirmed case in the country, Amnesty International reveals in a new investigation published on World Press Freedom Day.

Responding to a report by the Financial Times that India is searching for alternative spyware technology to replace NSO Group’s Pegasus surveillance software, Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, Head of the Security Lab at Amnesty International, said:  

A sophisticated hacking campaign by a mercenary spyware company targeting Google’s Android operating system has been exposed by Amnesty International’s Security Lab.