The FBI Can't Find 'Missing' Records of Its Hacking Tools

The FBI says it is unable to find records related to its purchase of a series of hacking tools, despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on them and those purchases initially being included in a public U.S. government procurement database before being quietly scrubbed from the internet. From a report: The news highlights the secrecy the FBI maintains around its use of hacking tools. The agency has previously used classified technology in ordinary criminal investigations, pushed back against demands to provide details of hacking operations to defendants, and purchased technology from surveillance vendors.

'Potentially responsive records were identified during the search,' a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request I sent about a specific hacking tool contract says. 'However, we were advised that they were not in their expected locations. An additional search for the missing records also met with unsuccessful results. Since we were unable to review the records, we were unable to determine if they were responsive to your request.' In other words, the FBI says it identified related records, then couldn't actually find them when it went looking.

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