Government use of advanced spyware has for years become one of the most controversial issues in privacy and digital security. Now in the United States, for the first time, official statistics about how often judges have authorized the use of hacking and surveillance tools to intercept communications will be made available to the public.
Under the new decision, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will create a separate category for the use of "spyware/hacking" in annual wiretap reports beginning in 2028. The first report including these data will be published in 2029. These reports have for nearly two decades annually published information about wiretap authorizations issued in the U.S., but until now the use of hacking tools and spyware was not recorded in its own category.
The significance of this change is that modern surveillance tools are no longer limited to traditional telephone wiretapping. Some tools known as Network Investigative Techniques or NIT can be used to access digital communications and even encrypted services. Thus, the new statistics can provide a more accurate picture of the lawful use of highly advanced surveillance technologies.
However, there is an important limitation: the new statistics do not cover all government uses of spyware. These data only include cases where spyware tools were used to intercept communications and were processed within the legal wiretap framework.
For example, if a remote hacking tool is used to access a person's phone and extract photos, files, or location information stored on the device, that action falls under "search" or a digital search and will not be counted in the new spyware wiretap statistics.
This distinction matters a great deal; a spyware can have capabilities far beyond listening to conversations. In some attacks, the attacker’s goal is direct access to content stored on the phone, while in other cases the focus is on real-time interception of communications. The courts' new report will measure only the second category of these activities.
The annual wiretap reports of the U.S. courts have so far published information such as the number of authorizations issued, whether the issuing judge was federal or state, the location where the wiretap was executed, and the type of crime under investigation. Adding a "spyware/hacking" category could be one of the most significant changes to these reports in recent years.
According to TechCrunch, this change came after efforts by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts told him that to include these data in the annual reports, forms and data collection processes must be revised, which is why recording will begin with the 2028 report.
Privacy advocates have welcomed the decision. Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, believes the true scale of government use of spyware has largely been unclear until now, and publishing official statistics can enable greater public oversight of how these tools are used.
Publishing these statistics could also help assess the extent to which surveillance tools are used in legal cases. When the number of authorizations to use spyware is released annually, lawmakers, researchers, and privacy organizations will be able to examine trends in the use of these technologies over time and, if they see an unusual increase, question it.
However, the first official statistics will not be released for three years. Courts will begin recording data on the use of spyware for wiretapping in 2028, and the report for that year will be available to the public in 2029. Therefore it is still unclear exactly how many times the U.S. government currently uses such tools to intercept communications.
The decision was made as governments' use of commercial spyware and mobile phone hacking tools has become a major topic in privacy debates. Greater transparency in statistics on the use of this technology in the U.S. could become an important future metric for assessing the level of government digital surveillance.