Internal Documents Show How Close the FBI Came to Deploying Spyware | Wray acknowledged that the #FBI had #bought a #license for #Pegasus???
WASHINGTON — During a closed-door session with lawmakers in December 2021, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, was asked whether the bureau had ever purchased and used Pegasus, the hacking tool that penetrates mobile phones and extracts their contents.
Wray acknowledged that the FBI had bought a license for Pegasus, but only for research and development. “To be able to figure out how bad guys could use it, for example,” he told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., according to a transcript of the hearing that was recently declassified.
But dozens of internal FBI documents and court records tell a different story. The documents, produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by The New York Times against the bureau, show that FBI officials made a push in late 2020 and the first half of 2021 to deploy the hacking tools — made by the Israeli spyware firm NSO — in its own criminal investigations. The officials developed advanced plans to brief the bureau’s leadership, and drew up guidelines for federal prosecutors about how the FBI’s use of hacking tools would need to be disclosed during criminal proceedings.
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It is unclear how the bureau was contemplating using Pegasus, and whether it was considering hacking the phones of American citizens, foreigners or both. In January, The Times revealed that FBI officials had also tested the NSO tool Phantom, a version of Pegasus capable of hacking phones with U.S. numbers.
The FBI eventually decided not to deploy Pegasus in criminal investigations in July 2021, amid a flurry of stories about how the hacking tool had been abused by governments across the globe. But the documents offer a glimpse at how the U.S. government — over two presidential administrations — wrestled with the promise and peril of a powerful cyberweapon. And, despite the FBI decision not to use Pegasus, court documents indicate the bureau remains interested in potentially using spyware in future investigations.
“Just because the FBI ultimately decided not to deploy the tool in support of criminal investigations does not mean it would not test, evaluate and potentially deploy other similar tools for gaining access to encrypted communications used by criminals,” stated a legal brief submitted on behalf of the FBI late last month.
In a statement, Wyden said “it is totally unacceptable for the FBI director to provide misleading testimony about the bureau’s acquisition of powerful hacking tools and then wait months to give the full story to Congress and the American people.”
He added, “The FBI also owes Americans a clear explanation as to whether the future operational use of NSO tools is still on the table.”
An FBI spokeswoman said “the director’s testimony was accurate when given and remains true today — there has been no operational use of the NSO product to support any FBI investigation.” A senior FBI official added that, in addition to Wray’s public and classified testimony, bureau officials have also given classified briefings on the matter to members of Congress and their staffs.
The specifics of why the bureau chose not to use Pegasus remain a mystery, but American officials have said that it was in large part because of mounting negative publicity about how the tool had been used by governments around the world.
Pegasus is a so-called zero-click hacking tool that can invade a target’s mobile phone and extract messages, photos, contacts, messages and video recordings. Numerous governments, both autocracies and democracies, have purchased and deployed Pegasus in recent years. It has been used by police and intelligence services to hack the phones of drug kingpins and terrorists, but it gained notoriety when it was revealed that governments, like Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Hungary and India had deployed it against political dissidents, journalists and human rights workers.
Wray’s closed-door testimony came just weeks after the Biden administration in November 2021 placed NSO and another Israeli hacking firm on a Commerce Department blacklist, preventing American companies from selling technology to the firms without permission from the U.S. government. On Capitol Hill, Congress is working on a bipartisan bill that would ban government agencies from using foreign commercial spyware such as Pegasus.
The Times revealed in January that the FBI had purchased Pegasus in 2018 and, over the next two years, tested the spyware at a secret facility in New Jersey. Since the bureau first purchased the tool, it has paid approximately $5 million to NSO.
Since that story was published, FBI officials, including Wray, have gone further than they did during the closed meeting with senators in December 2021. They acknowledged that the bureau did consider deploying Pegasus, though they still emphasized that the FBI’s main goal was to test and evaluate it to assess how adversaries might use it.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/internal-documents-show-close-fbi-160829343.html
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