Secret Service Against Citizens: What Surveillance Does to a Man

Radomir Lazovic, deputy of the Green-Left Front, told N1 that he was not surprised when he found out that members of the BIA entered the apartment where he lives and into his car. He was already among the targets spyware, so he reckoned that something like that could happen.

"I took that information badly, like anyone who would have someone break into their apartment. The fact that these people did it unhindered defeats me. I didn't expect anything else from them, but it still doesn't make you feel good. It's disturbing," said Lazović.

Lazovic he is not the only one. According to data from the SHARE Foundation, the devices of at least 14 people, including students, activists and opposition politicians, have been targeted since the beginning of 2026 in an attempt to infect them with advanced spyware.

Photo: FoNet

The first successful Pegasus attack in Serbia was confirmed on the phone of student Jelena Kontić. Radar weekly published documents according to which the BIA, with the approval of the High Court in Belgrade, eavesdropped on its newsroom, and BIRN and Amnesty International previously documented that the BIA installed the domestic spy program NoviSpy on activists' phones. Less than a month ago, on October 19, they were discovered to be spyware infected phones the rector of the University of Belgrade, Vladan Đokić, and senior prosecutor's associate Rade Bajić from the Public Prosecutor's Office for Organized Crime

All this is mostly talked about as abuse of services and violation of the law. Much less frequently is the question of what surveillance does to the people who have been exposed to it.

"Why should you worry?"

It seems like years have passed since then, but the President of the Constitutional Court Vladan Petrov, first of all, a month and a half ago, regarding allegations of spying on students, said: "If you have nothing special to hide, especially in the form of violent action, behavior that has criminal-legal consequences, and so on, why should you worry about whether someone is listening in on you or not."

Psychologist Goran Tomin then stated for "Vreme" that such an understanding confuses two things.

"Hiding something and having privacy are two completely different things. If you don't want something to be known about you, it doesn't mean you're hiding it," Tomin said. "When you know that at any moment someone can know what you are doing, where you are, who you are with, what kind of messages you are sending, but also that they intend to use it against you in any way, how can you live relaxed, regardless of the fact that you have nothing to hide?"

Photo: Pexels/Viresh studio

Even those who believe they have nothing to hide are not spared. The American researcher Elizabeth Stojchef showed in 2016 that it was precisely the respondents who support state surveillance who most often silenced opinions that they believed to be minority. Respondents were told that the American NSA monitors what citizens do on the Internet, so it was measured how ready they were to react to an announcement about attacks on the Islamic State. According to Stojčef, privacy is not a question of legality, but the right to choose how we present ourselves.

Fear doesn't end easily.

Psychologists agree that living without privacy, psychologically speaking, means living in a situation of persecution.

The consequences of being haunted can be very broad, "from the loss of a sense of security even in one's own home, through anxiety and fear, constant tension, problems with sleep, concentration, to evasive behavior", such as changing the route of movement and avoiding certain places. If the situation lasts for a long time, depressed mood and irritability due to feelings of powerlessness appear, "and even the appearance of PTSD."

Photo: Pixabay

The same is described by people who were under surveillance in other countries. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights spoke to 28 people whose phones were infected by Pegasus in El Salvador and noted the lasting effects: severe stress, fear, guilt and paranoia. Activists from Serbia told Amnesty that when they found out they were a target, they felt threatened, vulnerable and alone.

The UN special rapporteur for freedom of assembly and association, Gina Romero, states in a report from April, in which Serbia is also mentioned, that more than 60 percent of the activists surveyed report depression, exhaustion and other mental health problems that they associate with digital repression. Such studies are based mostly on testimonials rather than clinical evaluations, but their findings are consistent.

"Who's going to talk to me now"

Phone surveillance doesn't just affect the phone owner. Hungarian journalist Sabolc Panji, himself a target of Pegasus, summed it up by asking who would even want to talk to him after that. Victims often withdraw from friends, family and sources for fear of endangering them.

According to the UN report, many activists are changing their daily habits, limiting contacts and withdrawing from public life. Researcher John Penny found that under the threat of surveillance, women and young people self-censor most often. In Serbia, students are among the main targets.

Photo: Freepik

Trauma without a single event

The longest observed consequences of surveillance come from East Germany. The Stasi developed a method called "Zersetzung" (decomposition), which involved eavesdropping, spreading rumors, and deliberately causing failures at work and in private life. A paper published in 2024 in the Journal of the American Psychological Association concludes that such chronic stress does not lag behind traumatic events in its health consequences.

Even in Serbia, surveillance did not always remain hidden. One of the victims from the SHARE Foundation report suspected that her phone had been compromised when a well-known journalist talked about her private messages on a live broadcast. The Report did not specify which journalist it was about, and it should remain so, so that other people's intimacy does not spread further. 

All of the studies on trauma in people under observation say that trauma doesn't just happen because of what happened. "Traumatic is not only in what happened, but sometimes also in what could have happened, so it was narrowly avoided," agrees psychologist Goran Tomin.

Community as a shield

Researchers at Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto's digital espionage laboratory, note that it helps victims to rely on community and people who have been through the same thing.

Lazović hopes that such practices belong to the past. "The good thing is that it is in the past that we will remember as something ugly. I hope we are creating a society where such things will no longer be possible," he said on November 11.

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