US courts to publish data on government spyware use in wiretaps
The U.S. judiciary will begin disclosing how often judges authorize wiretaps conducted with hacking tools and spyware, starting with the 2028 Wiretap Report published in 2029, following years of calls for transparency.
The U.S. federal judiciary will for the first time publicly release statistics on how often authorities use spyware and hacking tools to conduct wiretaps. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts confirmed it will add a new "spyware/hacking" category to its annual Wiretap Report, starting with data from 2028 that will be published in 2029. The change follows years of criticism about the government's secretive use of surveillance technology.
The FBI has employed hacking techniques and spyware for more than two decades, since at least 1998, but no public record has documented how frequently these tools have been deployed. The annual Wiretap Report, issued for nearly two decades, details the number of authorized wiretaps, broken down by jurisdiction, crime type, and other factors. Wiretaps allow law enforcement to access real-time communications, and they require a high evidentiary bar, making them far less common than ordinary search warrants. Even so, a single wiretap can sweep up vast amounts of private messages.
The new statistics will cover only wiretaps that intercept live communications, such as calls or messages on platforms like Signal and WhatsApp. They will not include remote hacking that extracts stored data, such as photos or location information, because that is considered a search under a different legal process, officials noted.
Senator Ron Wyden, a longtime advocate for surveillance transparency, welcomed the decision. In a statement, he said the American public remains largely in the dark about government spying and urged Congress to pass his Government Surveillance Transparency Act. Privacy experts also praised the move. Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called it a huge win, saying that published data will help hold authorities accountable if spyware use proves excessive. Brett Max Kaufman of the ACLU described the change as an important and long-overdue step toward better-informed policy.
Other countries already offer such transparency. Italy, for example, reported that spyware was used against 4,321 targets in 2023.
