Europe Spent Millions on Phone Extraction Tools

A Statewatch investigation mapped more than 150 European surveillance contracts worth 69 million euros since 2023.

European agencies have spent at least 69 million euros on phone extraction and related surveillance technology since 2023, according to a Statewatch investigation that mapped more than 150 contracts. The purchases include Cellebrite tools and systems for facial recognition, video analysis, decryption and voice identification. [s1]

The investigation links the equipment to police work across the EU, Britain and Moldova, including the profiling of journalists, racialized people and activists. An EU-funded Moldovan cybercrime laboratory received tools under conditions that call for human-rights compliance, but Moldovan police did not confirm whether internal guidelines or data-protection assessments exist. [s1]

Phone extraction turns a seized device into a map of communications, movements and relationships, often reaching people who are not suspected of wrongdoing. Procurement totals show institutional scale; they do not establish that every contract or use was unlawful.

The sovereignty test is whether a person can know what was taken, challenge irrelevant collection and obtain a remedy when intimate data is misused. Contracts for powerful extraction tools should not outrun public rules governing who may search a digital life.