FBI Used Classified Hacking Tools in Ordinary Criminal Investigations

The FBI’s Remote Operations Unit (ROU), tasked with hacking into computers and phones, is one of the Bureau’s most elusive departments. But a recent report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Justice has now publicly acknowledged the unit’s existence seemingly for the first time. The report also revealed that the ROU has used classified hacking tools - techniques typically reserved for intelligence purposes - in ordinary criminal investigations, possibly denying defendants the chance to scrutinize evidence, as well as destabilizing prosecutors’ cases against suspects.

"When hacking tools are classified, reliance on them in regular criminal investigations is likely to severely undermine a defendant’s constitutional rights by complicating discovery into and confrontation of their details," said Brett Kaufman, a staff attorney at the ACLU. "If hacking tools are used at all, the government should seek a warrant to employ them, and it must fully disclose to a judge sufficient information, in clear language, about how the tools work and what they will do," he added. (Motherboard, March 29, 2018)

This hacking of American citizens by the FBI is not new. According to NBC News in 2013, the Remote Operations Unit and Remote Assistance Team, which uses private contractors to do the actual hacking of suspects, can send a virus, worm or other malware to a suspect's computer, giving law enforcement control of a wide range of activities, from turning a computer's webcam on and off to searching for documents on the machine, says Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.