Julian Assange has criticised Germany for allowing FinFisher to exist. Credit:AFP NSW Police is named as the only Australian agency among many around the world to have spent a collective $72 million on the software. NSW Police did not deny the spyware's use. "Given this technology relates to operational capabilility [sic], it's not appropriate to comment," a police spokesman said. Under NSW law, police can apply for "covert" search warrants, which allow them to search a computer without its owner's knowledge; this includes online accounts and the like. The warrants are obtained from a Supreme Court judge who is "eligible" to grant them.

In early March 2009, then NSW premier Nathan Rees unveiled a suite of new laws, one of which he said would allow police to gain "remote access" to computers for seven days at a time or up to a total of 28 days or longer in exceptional circumstances. The laws were passed later that month. "This could including cracking codes and searching computers for evidence of child porn, drug running and money laundering," Rees said then. "FinFisher continues to operate brazenly from Germany selling weaponised surveillance malware to some of the most abusive regimes in the world," said Julian Assange, the Australian WikiLeaks editor in chief, who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in Britain. "The Merkel government pretends to be concerned about privacy, but its actions speak otherwise. Why does the Merkel government continue to protect FinFisher? This full data release will help the technical community build tools to protect people from FinFisher including by tracking down its command and control centres." The leaked documents published by WikiLeaks have come to light following the hacking of Gamma International in August, which exposed an estimated 40 gigabytes of internal data from the firm detailing the operations and effectiveness of the FinFisher suite of surveillance platforms.

Sydney software architect and IT security consultant Troy Hunt said it was no surprise that government agencies, including NSW Police, were making use of the spyware. But he said its use raised a number of questions, such as whether police were obliged to remove the spyware after its use and whether due legal process was followed in installing it. He said the software gave its users the ability to virtually look over the shoulders of any target. More often than not he said the software was able to be installed remotely by its users. NSW Council for Civil Liberties spokesman Stephen Blanks said he was uncomfortable with the software's use. "The use of software like this to enable law-enforcement agencies to remotely access computer networks raises particular concerns and it is vital that there is sufficient information made available about the use of [the associated] warrants so that the public can be satisfied that they are not being abused."