"Licensing a commercial tool also creates a paper trail that may come to light while the origins of an internally developed tool may be easier to hide," Cobb said.

The security of such software could be another reason why a law enforcement agency like the BKA might want to handle its development internally.

believed to have been developed by a German company called DigiTask for use by the BKA in criminal investigations was discovered in Germany last year.

According to the Chaos Computer Club, a well-known European hacker club, that could have allowed attackers to take control of the monitored systems or submit fake data to the authorities.

Law enforcement, military and defense people are incapable of grasping that digital tools or weapons are inherently harder to control and contain than physical ones, Cobb said. "The risk of blow-back is exponentially greater when dealing with a weapon of which a million perfect copies can be created and shipped to anywhere on the planet, in seconds, at zero cost," he said.