This is the online edition of The Wiretap newsletter, your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here.Since 2023, the FBI has been investigating a senior Republican Congressional staffer over suspicions they were acting as a foreign agent on behalf of Qatar. As part of the previously-unreported probe, the DOJ ordered Apple to provide extensive information on the staffer, including their location history, emails, iMessages and other texts from encrypted apps including WhatsApp and Signal.To keep the investigation secret, the Justice Department also ordered the tech giant to stay quiet about the extent of the surveillance for at least five years, according to court documents reviewed by Forbes. That would mean the suspect wouldn’t find out about the investigation until August 2029. But Apple fought the gag order throughout the first half of 2025. Then in June last year, it won. A judge agreed the company could inform the Congressional staffer that Apple was sharing their data with the DOJ. That person, who is being investigated for potential breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, is yet to come forward. They are described as a “senior staffer to a member of the House of Representatives” but their identity and the full nature of the investigation remain unknown. Apple’s attempts to fight the non-disclosure orders were unsealed in November.Apple fought to inform its user they'd been surveilled over years and won. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)NurPhoto via Getty Images"We have a longstanding policy to inform users of government requests about them,” said Apple spokesperson Sarah O’Rourke. “In this case, lengthy orders prevented us from providing a notification and we challenged the timeframe. We have notified the user about the requests.”It’s the first known case in which a tech giant has been told to continuously provide a government official’s communications and locations over such a protracted period, covering data from 2020 to 2025. It’s also a rare instance of a Silicon Valley company successfully challenging a DOJ gag order.Apple has been asked to provide data on senior Congressional staff before. In 2021, CNN reported the Trump administration had subpoenaed Apple in 2018 to provide metadata on 73 phone numbers and 36 email addresses tied to House Intelligence Committee members and their aides, as part of an investigation into leaks of national security information.In this case, the government used three different kinds of surveillance orders to force Apple to keep tabs on the Republican staffer. They included two grand jury subpoenas in 2023 and 2025 covering account content and activity from 2020 onwards; a 2024 search warrant; and five pen registers through 2024, where the tech company must keep a record of who the surveillance target communicates with and when they do so. In court filings, Apple argued that the government provided “no compelling investigative purpose” to require it to stay quiet until 2029, saying this infringed on the company’s “First Amendment right to notify its user.” A judge agreed the five-year order was too long.Due to the nature and scope of surveillance in the Qatar-related investigation, Apple’s disclosures would have provided information on anyone who communicated with the target. That would likely include U.S. government employees as well as Qatari officials. Apple’s lawyers wrote in contesting the non-disclosure orders that the “conspiracy” involved at least one unregistered foreign agent, and the government of Qatar. There have been numerous DOJ investigations into Qatari influence in Washington. In 2025, former U.S. senator Bob Menendez was sentenced to 11 years in prison over charges that he accepted bribes in return for helping a New Jersey property developer land a deal with a Qatari investment fund. In 2023, former senior diplomat Richard Olson was sentenced to three years probation over allegations he illegally provided aid and advice to Qatar without registering as a foreign agent. It’s unclear if the Apple surveillance orders are related to either of those cases. The DOJ declined to comment on the current status of the investigation and none of the specific surveillance orders have been unsealed. “Per long-standing policy, the Department of Justice does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations,” said DOJ spokesperson Scottie Howell.Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964.THE BIG STORY(Photo by JOEL SAGET / AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesWhatsApp Catches NSO Spying AgainIn 2019, WhatsApp took Israeli spyware maker NSO Group to court for targeting its users in cyberattacks. It gained an injunction preventing NSO from spying via Meta’s encrypted messaging app. But WhatsApp now says NSO’s broken that court order, claiming it successfully disrupted social engineering attempts linked to the company. It’s now asking a court to hold NSO in contempt. 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