Documents expose how close the FBI came to deploying Pegasus: NYT

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The New York Times
14 Nov 2022 21:16
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Last December, FBI Director, Christopher Wray, told Congress that the bureau had purchased the phone hacking tool Pegasus for research and development purposes.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray (The New York Times)

A report by The New York Times reveals that as per internal documents, the FBI was very close to hiring Pegasus. The report mentions that during a closed-door meeting with lawmakers last December, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was asked if the bureau had ever purchased and used Pegasus, an Israeli hacking tool that penetrates mobile phones and extracts their contents.

Wray claimed 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 Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, according to a transcript of the hearing that was recently declassified.

Hundreds of internal FBI documents and court records, on the other hand, paint a different picture. The documents, obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The New York Times against the bureau, show that in late 2020 and the first half of 2021, FBI officials made a push to use the hacking tool developed by the Israeli spyware firm NSO in the security service's own criminal investigations.

The officials devised advanced plans to brief the FBI's leadership and set guidelines for federal prosecutors on how the FBI's use of hacking tools should be disclosed during criminal proceedings.

It is unclear how the bureau planned to use Pegasus and whether it intended to hack the phones of American citizens, foreigners, or both. The New York Times reported in January that FBI officials had also tested the NSO tool Phantom, a version of Pegasus capable of hacking phones with US phone numbers.

However, the FBI decided against using Pegasus in criminal investigations in July 2021, but the documents provide insight into how the US government grappled with the promise and peril of a powerful cyberweapon over two presidential administrations. Despite the FBI's alleged decision not to use Pegasus, court documents show that the agency is still interested in 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.