The government’s spyware playbook has had one big problem for the public: there has been no reliable count of how often it is used. That is set to change as U.S. federal courts prepare to track spyware and hacking-based communications interceptions in a new category of the annual Wiretap Report. The development matters because spyware can put investigators much closer to the source of a person’s communications than conventional network interception can. Yet while the judiciary has published detailed statistics on court-authorized wiretaps for decades, those reports have not separately shown how many specifically involved government spyware techniques. The figures to come will still leave some questions unanswered. But they will give lawmakers, researchers and the public something they have largely lacked: a number that can be tracked from one year to the next. What the agreement introduces According to TechCrunch, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will add a “spyware/hacking” category to the annual Wiretap Report. That will allow courts to separately count cases in which hacking techniques are authorized to intercept communications. …