Sen. Ron Wyden asked the Government Accountability Office to review how the FBI, DEA, ICE Homeland Security Investigations, and the Secret Service use hacking tools and spyware. In a letter sent Friday, he said the public has little visibility into how often those tools are deployed, why they are used, or what safeguards govern them.
Wyden wants the watchdog to look at misuse, storage and security practices, and how courts are told about the risk to innocent targets. The issue is not a single operation but the reporting gap: unlike wiretaps and pen registers, hacking operations do not come with annual public reports, so problems can stay hidden long after the fact.
If the GAO takes up the request, the result could be more formal accounting for federal hacking practices and a clearer paper trail around intrusive surveillance tools.