According to The New York Times, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was considering using NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus spyware in criminal investigations as recently as early last year.
According to internal FBI documents and court records obtained by The Times, agency officials were in the “advanced” stages of developing plans to brief FBI leadership on the software between late 2020 and early 2021.
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These documents also show that the FBI created guidelines for federal prosecutors outlining how the FBI’s use of Pegasus should be disclosed during court proceedings.
The FBI eventually decided not to use Pegasus in criminal investigations by July 2021. That same month, The Washington Post published an investigation alleging that the software was used to compromise the phones of two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
A few months later, the US placed Pegasus creator NSO Group on the Commerce Department’s entity list, barring US companies from doing business with the company. Despite its decision not to use Pegasus, the FBI has stated that it is open to the use of spyware in the future.
“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,” states a legal briefing filed by the FBI in October.
The documents appear to paint a different picture of the FBI’s interest in Pegasus than the one presented to Congress during a closed-door hearing in December by FBI Director Chris Wray.
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“If you mean have we used it in any of our investigations to collect or target somebody, the answer is – as I’m assured – no,” he said in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden.
“The reason why I hedge, and I want to be transparent, that we have acquired some of their tools for research and development. In other words, to be able to figure out how bad guys could use it, for example.”
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