The U.S. doesn’t need to know who they’re targeting or show probable cause when ordering Facebook, WhatsApp or any tech company to help agencies spy on users in secret, newly-unsealed court documents show.
U.S. federal agencies have been using a 35-year-old American surveillance law to secretly track WhatsApp users with no explanation as to why and without knowing who they are targeting.
In Ohio, a just-unsealed search warrant reveals that in November 2021, DEA investigators demanded the Facebook-owned messaging company track seven users based in China and Macau. Although the warrant doesn’t reveal the identities of the targets, the DEA instructed WhatsApp to monitor their IP addresses and numbers, and also the times and methods they used the app. Such surveillance is done using a technology known as a pen register and under the 1986 Pen Register Act, and don’t ask for any message content, which WhatsApp couldn’t provide anyway, as it is end-to-end encrypted.
WhatsApp, owned by Facebook (or Meta, as it’s now called), has been repeatedly ordered to help spy on users, the identity of whom the government does not know, and with no probable cause to show. (Photo by Jaap Ariens/NurPhoto via Getty Images
NurPhoto via Getty Images
As Forbes previously reported, over at least the last two years, law enforcement in the U.S. has repeatedly ordered WhatsApp and other tech companies to install these pen registers without showing any probable cause. The government order to track Chinese users was issued with three elements. These include the identity and identity of the law enforcement officer or attorney who made the application, the identity of any agency that made the application, and the certification by the applicant that the information that is likely to be obtained is relevant for an ongoing criminal investigation being carried out by the agency .
“Aside from the elements listed above, federal law doesn’t require that an application to a warrant authorizing the installation or use of a penregister and a trap-and-trace device specify any facts.” The government stated in the most recent warrant.
This latest case shows America’s unexplained spying has a global reach. It affects foreign targets whose identities are not known by the government. According to another search warrant unearthed by Forbes, one previous case in Ohio saw another seven WhatsApp users targeted, three in the U.S., four in Mexico. The U.S. knew either the user’s real name or the alias for each case.
Chinese opioid sales
As the Chinese WhatsApp numbers were published unredacted in the search warrant, Forbes was able to find indications that the DEA was seeking to carry out surveillance on Chinese individuals and entities shipping opioids on the web and over encrypted apps. One number was included as a contact in a comment from 2020 on a blogpost, offering shipment of pharmaceutical products, providing an email containing the domain of what appears to be a Chinese company. (As no charges have been filed in the case, Forbes is not revealing the numbers of the names of the entities being targeted by the DEA probe. At the time of publication, the Ohio Justice Department had not commented. )
Another was listed on a Facebook page where chemicals were being sold by a company pr