What we know about how the U.S. government uses spyware (and what we don't)
The U.S. government's use of spyware has raised concerns among privacy advocates, particularly with the Trump administration potentially reversing previous restrictions. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently acknowledged its use of spyware to combat foreign threats, which critics fear could lead to increased surveillance abuses. The situation is complicated by the involvement of companies like NSO Group, known for its controversial spyware Pegasus, which has been linked to human rights violations worldwide.
- ▪ICE has admitted to using spyware as part of its surveillance technology arsenal.
- ▪Critics are concerned that the Trump administration may lift restrictions on companies like NSO Group, which produces the powerful spyware Pegasus.
- ▪The Biden administration had previously taken a hard stance against the spyware industry, including sanctions and an executive order limiting its use.
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| Original publisher | NPR — News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.npr.org/2026/05/19/nx-s1-5826085/spyware-trump-dhs-paragon |
| Publication time | Tue, 19 May 2026 05:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-19T09:09:57.431Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-19T09:09:57.431Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 398-ujOnc6az |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Technology What we know about how the U.S. government uses spyware (and what we don't) May 19, 20265:00 AM ET By Jude Joffe-Block Privacy and civil rights advocates are worried the Trump administration could be persuaded to also lift restrictions placed on NSO Group, an Israeli company that makes the powerful spyware Pegasus that researchers say can turn a phone into a recording device in addition to accessing its contents. Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged for the first time the agency's growing arsenal of surveillance technology includes spyware.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at NPR — News.
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