U.S. Courts Will Count Government Spyware Wiretaps Starting With 2028 Data

Since at least 1998 the FBI has deployed spyware and network investigative techniques to intercept communications. No public count of those wiretaps has ever existed. That changes with the 2028 data. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts confirmed it will add a dedicated spyware/hacking category to its annual Wiretap Report. The first numbers will appear in the 2029 report. Encrypted apps did not end surveillance. They redirected it into hacking tools that remained invisible to the public.

The Wiretap Report has tracked court-authorized intercepts since 1968. It records the number of orders, the crimes under investigation, and the jurisdictions involved. It has never distinguished conventional intercepts from those executed by spyware or NITs that break into live calls and messages on services such as Signal and WhatsApp.

The new category fills only that specific gap. It will count spyware used to intercept real-time communications. It will not count remote device searches that extract stored photos, files, or location data. Those operations fall under separate legal processes and remain uncounted. Forms and procedures must still be updated before the category can appear. Italy already publishes comparable figures; spyware was used against 4,321 targets there in 2023.

Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, stated the change ends years of pure estimation: “Up until now, we have only been able to guess at the size of the problem.” Brett Max Kaufman of the ACLU called it “an important and long-overdue step forward for transparency around government hacking.”

Law enforcement has described these tools as surgical. An official count will test that claim in public. Hundreds of uses would support the narrow-tool framing. Tens of thousands would collapse it. A single wiretap order has historically captured large volumes of communications. Scale determines whether the practice remains exceptional or becomes routine.

Senator Ron Wyden, who has pressed for this data since at least 2017, welcomed the commitment while noting its limits. He has criticized the broader secrecy surrounding electronic surveillance orders and has proposed legislation requiring wider transparency. “Americans remain largely in the dark about how the government spies on them,” Wyden said. The new category narrows the darkness for real-time intercepts on encrypted apps. Device searches and other surveillance methods stay outside the count.

The first concrete number on government spyware in the wiretap context will not arrive until 2029. For advocates who have argued about a program they could not quantify, an official figure—even a partial one—removes the ability to dismiss the practice as rare or unmeasurable. The conversation moves from speculation to data. The Fourth Amendment questions that follow will rest on that data rather than estimates.