The government’s spyware playbook has had one big problem for the public: there has been no reliable count of how often it is used.
That is set to change as U.S. federal courts prepare to track spyware and hacking-based communications interceptions in a new category of the annual Wiretap Report.
The development matters because spyware can put investigators much closer to the source of a person’s communications than conventional network interception can. Yet while the judiciary has published detailed statistics on court-authorized wiretaps for decades, those reports have not separately shown how many specifically involved government spyware techniques.
The figures to come will still leave some questions unanswered. But they will give lawmakers, researchers and the public something they have largely lacked: a number that can be tracked from one year to the next.
What the agreement introduces
According to TechCrunch, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will add a “spyware/hacking” category to the annual Wiretap Report. That will allow courts to separately count cases in which hacking techniques are authorized to intercept communications.
Spyware is a form of malware designed to secretly monitor or collect information from a device, and its capabilities can go far beyond simply reading messages.
Depending on the tool, it can give an attacker access to communications, files, location data, screenshots, and even a device’s camera or microphone. That makes spyware particularly powerful in the hands of threat actors.
The new report category, however, would not create a public record of individual spyware operations and will not necessarily capture every government use of hacking tools, such as a remote search for information already stored on a device. That leaves a significant portion of government hacking activity still outside the public view.
There are also timing and scope limits. The new category will start with 2028 data and will not disclose to the public how extensively government agencies have used spyware in previous years.
Privacy advocates welcome the change
Despite the apparent limitations, government surveillance and privacy advocates have lauded the effort.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Sen. Ron Wyden said he is “thankful that the federal courts agreed to collect and publish data about hacking.” Wyden also suggested that this is the starting point, citing the “Government Surveillance Transparency Act” he and others reintroduced earlier this year.
Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the use of spyware surveillance a “problem,” while noting that the development will bring greater accountability on its use.
Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel in the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy, said it was a “long overdue” transparency step.
Why this development matters
The decision could give privacy advocates in other regions a stronger case for demanding similar transparency from their governments, particularly as spyware capabilities increasingly become advanced.
But transparency also has a security side: while these aggregate figures should not give hackers a playbook, the development would make government surveillance records — which are already highly targeted — even more valuable to threat actors.
For individuals, however, the more important consequence is what the data could eventually expose about the scale and reach of device surveillance — information that can be used to challenge excessive or unlawful monitoring and push for stronger safeguards.
The consequences of device surveillance can also extend beyond the person being targeted. Access to a compromised device may expose communications involving journalists’ sources, lawyers’ clients, colleagues, relatives and other contacts.
The value of the new reporting category is therefore less about revealing individual government operations and more about establishing a public baseline for how frequently one of the most intrusive forms of digital surveillance is being authorized.
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