Photo: Ruben Boekeloo / Pexels
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon is pushing the U.S. Government Accountability Office to investigate how federal agencies use hacking tools and spyware against Americans. The request, made in a letter Friday, traces the history of these tools back to a Philadelphia case that put the city at the center of a surveillance milestone.
The earliest documented case of the FBI using spyware dates to 1999, when agents investigating illegal gambling and loan sharking discovered that mobster Nicodemo S. Scarfo had encrypted a file on his computer using Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP. To crack it, the FBI installed rudimentary malware that recorded Scarfo’s keystrokes, allowing them to decrypt the file.
That case set a precedent. More than two decades later, Wyden argues the public still knows almost nothing about how often or why federal agents deploy these tools. In his letter to the GAO, Wyden wrote that “there exists little public information regarding its scope, frequency, or operational safeguards.”
Wyden’s letter asks the GAO to examine whether agents have misused hacking tools for unauthorized or personal purposes, how agencies acquire and secure the technology, and whether courts are fully informed when agents seek warrants. He also flagged the case of a former defense contractor executive who stole advanced hacking tools and sold them to a Russian broker, with the tools later used by Russian spies against Ukraine.
The GAO has not yet responded publicly to the request.