Researchers find Jordan government used Cellebrite phone-cracking tech against activists

Citizen Lab and OCCRP reporting finds that Jordanian authorities used Cellebrite forensic phone-extraction tools to nonconsensually access and extract data from the devices of activists and human-rights defenders between late 2023 and mid-2025; analysis of four returned phones and supporting court documents gave the researchers high confidence in Cellebrite product use, prompting calls for the vendor to investigate client misuse and highlighting broader concerns about state surveillance of civil society.