The FBI has used hacking tools and spyware since at least 1998. Until now, no public numbers showed how often federal authorities deployed them. That changes for one specific use: spyware that taps real-time communications.

Starting in 2029, the U.S. judiciary will disclose exactly how many times judges approved wiretaps carried out with hacking tools and spyware. These fall under the category the government calls network investigating techniques, or NITs.

Annual Wiretap Reports and the New Category

For nearly two decades the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has released yearly Wiretap Reports. The reports list how many wiretaps federal and state judges authorized, which states they covered, the types of crimes under investigation, and related figures.

Wiretaps give law enforcement live access to calls, messages, and other communications. Because they are highly invasive, officers must meet a high evidence standard before a judge signs off. As a result, wiretaps are approved far less often than ordinary search warrants. Even so, a single wiretap can collect large volumes of data. One earlier operation gathered millions of text messages over three months.

The reports already break wiretaps into categories: audio taps that capture voice calls, oral taps that use physical microphones, and electronic taps that intercept texts, emails, and similar messages as they move through a provider’s network.

The Administrative Office told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden that it will begin tracking a new “spyware/hacking” category in the 2028 Wiretap Report, which will appear the following year. A spokesperson confirmed the change, noting that reporting forms and procedures must first be updated so the new data can be collected and published.

What the Numbers Will and Will Not Cover

The new statistic will count only cases in which authorities use spyware to intercept live communications, such as calls and messages on apps like Signal and WhatsApp. It will not include remote hacks that extract stored data from a phone—images, files, location history, and the like. Those actions count as searches under a different legal process.

Calls for Greater Transparency

Wyden has criticized the secrecy surrounding electronic surveillance orders and has pushed for public data on government hacking of Americans’ devices since 2017. He welcomed the courts’ decision but said Congress still needs to pass his Government Surveillance Transparency Act, which he and other senators reintroduced earlier this year.

Privacy advocates described the change as a major step forward. Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted that until now outsiders could only guess at the scale of spyware use. Once the numbers appear, she said, it will be harder for authorities to deny deployment and easier to demand accountability if the totals prove high. “It’s hard to say that you’re using spyware as a surgical tool when you’ve deployed it tens of thousands of times,” she added.

Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy, called the move an important and long-overdue advance that should produce better-informed policy and law.

Some other countries already release similar figures. Italy, for example, reported that spyware was used against 4,321 targets in 2023.