Congress wants to know which foreign governments are using commercially-available surveillance tools — commonly referred to as spyware.
The US government’s new position was included in a draft of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, the bill that lays out funding for the US government’s intelligence operations for next year.
According to the bill’s draft text (see Section 503), US officials want the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to submit a report to Congress on the status of commercially-available software, the companies that make these hacking tools, and which foreign governments or foreign entities are using them.
