Hackers and the tools used to wrangle their way into people’s online accounts are often viewed as a nuisance, but law enforcement officials in the US are seeing these tools in a new light.

According to reports, the FBI develops hacking tools internally as well as purchases tools from private sectors, all in an effort to remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Android to record conversations.  The revelation came from a former US official who added that the officials can do the same with the microphones on laptops, and the users wouldn’t even know.

The Wall Street Journal reports that sources familiar with the matter stated that the hacking tools were only used under court orders in an effort to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, such as online chat and encryption tools.

Allegedly, the FBI has been developing hacking tools for over a decade but has rarely disclosed use of them publicly.

Though the intention is good, it seems as shady as the NSA’s PRISM and XKeyscore projects – it disregards the privacy of its people.

“People should understand that local cops are going to be hacking into surveillance targets,” said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. “We should have a debate about that.”

Both Google and the FBI declined to comment on the matter.

Disregarding privacy?

SiliconANGLE Contributing Editor John Casaretto explains that this effort is concerning a lot of citizens as this is another way for the government to disregard people’s right to privacy.

“The FBI has been hiring people who have these hacking skills.  They purchase tools and they’re developing these things themselves,” Casaretto explains during a recent appearance on the Live NewsDesk Show with Kristin Feledy.

“Basically, what they’ve been doing is building what’s called the Red Team.  A Red Team is a penetration testing team a lot of companies will hire these ethical hackers to crack their own little environment to see how secure they are and validate some things, validate their system.  In this case they have targets and it appears that in the anecdotes we’ve seen, they’ve gotten warrants and it’s all been blessed by the courts and in specific cases.

“The fact of the matter is, for the FBI, there is a lot out there to investigate anything from financial criminals, to child pornography, to all these different things, but there’s really not a lot of reasons for them to spy or hack individuals without any cause.  The private citizens aren’t doing anything, yet at the same time, we see this scaling of the federal workforce.  We see a whole lot of government programs growing exponentially and a lot of things are going on like this so there’s a lot of concern,” Casaretto added.

For more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video below: