The U.S. government has made it harder to track the purchase of spy tech by government agencies.

FPDS.gov, a website that allowed tracking of spying tools purchased by U.S. government agencies, has been shut down and replaced by SAM.gov. FPDS.gov was a key resource for finding out what phone hacking tools, location data, and Palantir installations were being purchased with taxpayer money.

Issues with the new system

Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that FPDS, despite its outdated interface, was extremely functional and robust. It was the first tool used by many investigative journalists and researchers to quickly find out what the government was buying, from whom, and how the contracts were linked.

With FPDS, it was possible to enter search terms such as "Clearview AI" and view all government contracts mentioning the facial recognition company. The new system, SAM.gov, makes it harder to find what agencies have actually purchased. Searches that gave clear results in FPDS are not immediately available in SAM.gov, and the results do not immediately show the category of the purchase.

The work of journalists and researchers will be more complex with SAM.gov, as the system is less transparent than the previous one.