In 2021, Israeli police tech provider Cellebrite announced that it would no longer sell its technology, which can break into locked phones and quickly extract data, to Russia. At the time, it was facing a firestorm after the Russian government used its tech to raid the phone of Lyubov Sobol, a prominent opposition figure and Alexander Navalny ally, in late 2020.

But within months of the ban being enacted, Moscow investigators used Cellebrite technology to search the iPhone of Russian opposition politician Andrey Pivovarov, according to an analysis by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and records from Pivovarov’s legal team.

The evidence that Russia continued to use Cellebrite technology to target another prominent Russian activist, so soon after the Sobol case, indicates the company failed to shut down the Kremlin’s use of its data-extraction devices. It isn’t the first sign Cellebrite doesn’t have full control over its products; in 2022, Israeli publication Haaretz reported that the Kremlin’s investigators openly stated they used Cellebrite’s tools.

Cellebrite didn’t respond directly to Forbes enquiries. Instead, it copied in Forbes and other publications into an email from chief marketing officer David Gee to Citizen Lab and Access Now, a nonprofit that’s been supporting Pivovarov, in which he complained that the researchers didn’ not being given advance access to the report.

“It's really sad that a state which fights for freedom helps the dictatorship regime in Russia.” Andrey Pivovarov, Russian opposition politician

“It's really sad that a state which fights for freedom helps the........

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