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Cyber Crime A Distant #3 Priority for FBI
An anonymous reader writes "A reading of the Justice Department's 2008 budget justification to Congress for the FBI indicates the agency is dedicating about 5.5 percent of its field agents to combating cyber crime, the FBI's stated Number Three priority, The Washington Post reports. Take away the agents dedicated to catching child predators online — a program that accounts for the vast majority of the department's prosecutorial victories — and about 3.6 percent of the FBI's agents are dedicated to cyber crime, the report notes. From the story: 'If the FBI's third most-important priority claims just over 3.5 percent of its active agents, how many agents and FBI resources are dedicated to the remaining Top Ten priorities?'"
It's not important yet...kind of like airport security before 911.
After China pwns all of the DoD's sensitive data, you can bet they'll pump all kinds of money at it.
blah blah blah
Maybe field agents don't do cybercrime a lot...office ones do. The field ones just seize computers and make arrests and a little investigation and stuff
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
These must be a tough times for terrorist pedophile cyber criminals
Everyone knows that the FBI's most important priority, and the largest percentage of their manpower is devoted to lobbying congress for more power.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
'If the FBI's third most-important priority claims just over 3.5 percent of its active agents, how many agents and FBI resources are dedicated to the remaining Top Ten priorities?'"
I am not sure what you want. This reminds me of a conversation I once had with a user:
User: Why didn't you add feature X in this revision?
Me: If you remember, we sent out a feature ballot, and X was not voted high.
User: That's because you put it toward the end of the ballot list, where people didn't see it.
Me: We can't put everything at the top of the list.
User: Why not?
Me: (I fake a beeper call and leave)
Table-ized A.I.
Only on its own citizens.
Let's hope one of the top two is not chasing down
pornographers, the way it was purported to be just
before 9/11.
What priority are the X-Files?
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
If the FBI's third most-important priority claims just over 3.5 percent of its active agents, how many agents and FBI resources are dedicated to the remaining Top Ten priorities?
Well, obviously, less than 3.5%. So, if you use the optimistic estimate that each of the other 7 in the top 10 priorities are slightly less than 3.5% (i.e. 3.4%), that totals 23.8%, which means the top two priorities are consuming at least 72.7% of the resources.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Will you see support of websites like thepiratesbay.org and disdain for the RIAA and MPAA and complaints that the government is trying to monitor internet traffic and watch what we're doing and then turn around and complain that the FBI isn't taking cybercrime seriously...
I'm sure #1 is taking up about 90% of the agents or thereabouts (no it doesn't say so in the document, far too long and too pdf for me to read or even search through the whole thing). Because terrorist attacks are soooooo much more scary than the other 9. I think we should bump it up to 100% and just forget about every other problem except for those darn terrorists.
Priority 1 - Protect the United States from terrorist attack
Priority 2 - Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and
espionage
Priority 3 - Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and hightechnology
crimes
Priority 4 - Combat public corruption at all levels
Priority 5 - Protect civil rights;
Priority 6 - Combat transnational and national criminal organizations and enterprises
Priority 7 - Combat major white-collar crime
Priority 8 - Combat significant violent crime
Priority 9 - Support federal, state, local and international partners
Priority 10 - Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Actually if the choices are listed horizontally all of them can be at the top of the list. Obviously the paper you were reading from to the user wasn't very well thought out.
Creative Demolition
Oh, was that supposed to be rhetorical?
Sorry. This slashdot, we are all pedants, with the occasional pedantess, here.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But there's more to cybercrime than copyright infringement.
Cracking/theft of secure data
DDoS attacks
Spam and the associated botnets
Viruses
All of which come far higher on the evil list than copying music and movies. IMHO.
And the RIAA/MPAA hate is well documented on many sites and not unreasonable. So far the pirate bay has proven to be within the law in the place it is based and so is not related to crime at all.
So I says to myself... self, if they have only 3.6% of their agents for their #3 priority, then they must have nobody for their #10. So whatever that is, I'll make my ill gained fortunes that way, and never worry about getting caught.
Turns out their last priority is "Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI's mission." Huh... so how are they going to get anything done on their higher priorities if they don't have the technology necessary to successfully perform their mission?
Of course if I became a Microsoft Software Solutions Salesman, I could interfere with their #10 objective, make lots of money, and still be completely above the law... but where's the fun in that?
My guess:
1. Being the MPAA's and RIAA's paid/bribed bitch.
2. Illegally detaining, interrogating, and torturing innocent people in the name of "fighting terror".
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Federal law enforcement's duty isn't to protect anybody, it's to stalk and build dossiers on people who disagree politically with the powers that be. I think the FBI's recent revelation that they're tracking over a HALF MILLION "terrorists" domestically should be eye opening to anybody who blindly trusts secretive government (not just US) agencies.
Like the saying goes: "Be glad you're not getting all the government you're paying for."
Since when was it news that you can't arrest your boss? If the FBI were prosecuting cyber criminals, they would have to arrest people at MD, MS, RIAA/MPAA and other 'defenders of American freedom' in the course of business.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending a "CEO's dinner" at a regional tech trade show. (I'm not a CEO, I just happened to work for the meetings major sponsor.) The majority of attendees were the type of people who wear very expensive watches and attend regional tech conferences and use words like "synergy" a lot.
The keynote speech was given by an FBI special agent, and was about cybercrime (I hate that word). He talked about where major risks came from, talked up InfraGard a bit, and generally gave common sense advice to the CEO types there. I remember thinking, "This guy can't really be a computer security expert, can he?"
At one point, I zoned out, and when I tuned back in I thought he was using a Latino name repeatedly in a context I didn't understand. So I glanced up at his powerpoint slide, then back at him, and then back at the slide, until I made the connection.
He was talking about "warez," but he was pronouncing it "Juarez."
I found it very hard to take him seriously after that.
I would think that the NSA should be on top of the serious stuff more than the FBI. I mean, why else would they be so secretive? How many other US agencies are there where you can't reveal your true identity to many people even after you retire?
From what I've seen on the front lines, the Bureau has definitely been cutting back significantly on anything except intelligence gathering. Of course, fighting cybercrime was always challenging for them - I mean, go figure, most cybercrooks are International or very well proxied. Most of the time, the FBI just weeded out the terminally stupid. So honestly, it's not going to make too big of a deal in the short run.
or is this just plain silly.
Assuming for the moment that the top 10 are fairly evenly staffed, that's about 55%, give or take. That leaves about 45% for everything else.
Seems roughly right to me. There are far more than 10 "big problems" in our good ol' US of A.
Number of Special Agents on the Cyber Crimes Task Force at the Kansas City field office: Five.
I know three of them. They're good, and they have a good conviction rate, but still, only five? I don't know how they do it.
That isn't correct because there are other tasks that they are working besides their top 10. They could have another 100 tasks which each occupy just 0.5% of the staff, meaning that only half of their staff is working on the top 10 priorities. Secondly, just because something has higher priority does not necisarily mean that it has a higher number of staff allocated to it, especially if it just recently increased in priority, and they don't have enough people that are proficient in that area. Therefore, the number could be anywhere between 7 staff members, and 95.5% of the staff.
But even if we do make the assumption that staff is a nondecreasing function of priority, the most that you can say is that the top two priority tasks each have as many staff members as the third priority task which leaves at most 100% - 3*3.5% = 89.5% available.
With the level of incompetence of law enforcement agencies with respect to anything technical, why on earth would you want cybercrime at a high priority??? The less time they spend on it, the less damage they can do.
This is why it's a good thing that "cyber crime" is a low priority.
Is this only a math understanding problem or what? How many priorities/duties do they have? Four? Ten? Or hundreds?
Are we sure people discussing this know 3.6% means "1/28 of WHOLE FBI agent staff"?
Or it's only "ohhhhh, cyber something! nerds will like it! Approved!"?
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
I know those FBI folks are pretty busy and all, but could they just spare a LITTLE time to go arrest the SCO management team already?
Man that is around 391K per agent. I take it there is a pork project or two in there, but really that is a lot of dough, especially for cyber-crime where you don't necessarily need much besides servers/connectivity, experts, and a lot of time. I would love to see the break-down of costs. I have a feeling they aren't looking for the most economical route to catch cyber criminals. http://parthian-shot.blogspot.com/
Though from the UK perspective, I would point out one thing.
The primary aim of ALL government-operated organisations, in any part of the world is:
SECURE YOUR BUDGET
If you do not do this, you can whistle for any other work. If there is no independent audit or pressure to keep you primarily focussed on your work, more and more time will be spent fighting for your budget.
So I suggest that between a quarter and a third of FBI staff are primarily engaged in this process. It will involve writing reports, attending liaison meetings, and general admin - all intended to ensure the presence of the FBI in other state run operations is expected, costed, and budgeted for.
Of the remaining 2/3 of the staff, I suspect that anything up to half their time may be spent on either supporting the obtaining of the main FBI budget, or internal work intended to ensure that their portion of the money does not go to some other section.
That leaves around 1/3 of staff time available for performing the priority tasks of the FBI.
The same goes for the CIA, the British Security Service, and any other government body whose accounts are not open to independant audit. I have been through this loop before in Whitehall. Were you surprised at the cost of weapons development, or any other secretive government activity? Now you know. Remember, it's NOT commercial!
Just sitting in the back corner somewhere going DOH! everytime he open his mailbox and gets some spam.
Seriously, when are there going to be DAILY headlines about spammers being thrown in prison?
I'd settle for all their assets being seized and home confinement as long as there are no electronics in the house (computers/phone, etc.)
Why isn't spam a priority for law enforcement?
Somewhere off the Internet, real children, women and adults are getting harmed. That should be priority of FBI rather than pictures being circulated online or intellectual (literally imaginary if you think of it) property. When all crimes are committed "online" we can all sigh in relief and confine offenders to Second Life jails.
Please disregard, I hit "overrated" when I meant to hit "insightful".
I was a target of an FBI cyber-crime investigation, launched against me by a greedy former business partner who wanted to mess up my life. The investigation was based on nothing more than bullshit opinion letter written by that guy's good friend who happened to be a lawyer. It took me about a year and tens of thousands of dollars to explain basic copyright law to this FBI agent. When they figured out that there was no crime or misconduct, they went away... but I didn't get any compensation for what had happened. I almost wish they had arrested me, so I could have at least come back at them for wrongful arrest damages, but whatever.
I have a feeling that a lot of their "cyber crime" investigations are not crimes at all, but rather are civil matter, business disputes, or just plain revenge and retaliation missions. They shouldn't be involved in such things, ever, but they do get involved. All it takes is an authoritative-sounding pitch from a lawyer, who has nothing to lose from it.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending a "CEO's dinner" at a regional tech trade show. (I'm not a CEO, I just happened to work for the meetings major sponsor.) The majority of attendees were the type of people who wear very expensive watches and attend regional tech conferences and use words like "synergy" a lot.
In other words, a bunch of people who perhaps were technical once, a long time ago, but most likely weren't and definitely aren't now.
Sounds like the FBI guy was pitching his presentation at the audience; chances are, he was selected specifically to match the audience too. In other words, a good presenter, rather than a good security expert necessarily.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I found it very hard to take him seriously after that. But that's how the illegals are getting in, those damn tubes run right under the Rio Grande. Go to Juarez's site and you can hop a tube straight into the US of A. It's not like a dumptruck! It's a series of tubes! Soylent Green is made of sherbet!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
...the amount of resources the FBI uses on cyber crime could be smaller. It's good to see it number three on this list, I almost expected it to be further down. The question is, are these resources being used appropriately? Whose interests are they trying to protect?
...just not at the same time. You could take your list and make several iterations of it with heach having a different set of features listed toward the top. Present a different set to each respondent. That way, while you are doing yoru survey, you could eliminate any possible bias created by the listing order.
As long as criminals are committing their crimes online, the streets will be safer ;)
FBI's COINTELPRO activities seems to be a plausible explanation why so many trolls seem to plague the anti-war movement's boards these days. Like, doesn't FBI have better things to do than to harrass anti-war people, civil-rights activists and pro-human-rights movements these days? -- It certainly doesn't seem so.
It's not just suits and feds who pronounce it like that. A former boss (mom & pop computer shop) who was into the scene (but TBH mispronounced several things) pronounced it about like that.
OT: I pronounce luser as leuser, i.e. "user" with the l-sound prepended. I'm told it's more common to pronounce it as simply "loser".
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Eye-roll fest. Yep, law enforcement officials love to bust people who look at pictures. The people are easy to catch, and even easier to convict. Whether it's pictures of rape or just nude under 18s, you just mention the magic words, "child pornography", and everyone screams in horror and runs for their lynching nooses like some absurd Pavlovian dog response.
I'm not defending the content of whatever horrible images you may have conjured in your head. Child-rape is a horrible heinous crime. It should be punished severely. But we're talking about dumb-asses that are looking at pictures. Looking at pictures. The "supporting the market/production" argument is weak at best; I have the feeling most of these saps aren't even paying for the pics anymore unless it's an FBI honeypot. It's a waste of resources to keep going after people who just look at pictures, especially since the rest of us end up paying for their very lengthy prison-terms, and their subsequent uselessness to society as branded sex-offenders. Instead, the FBI should be concentrating on the people creating the pictures, who are the real "child predators".
"If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
Maybe instead of just waiting for it all to happen they ought to put more keeping it from happening. There are some many good scanner and firewalls available now, but it is scary how few high profile targets, like insurance companies, actually are using them. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of remedy.
The FBI is not the only federal agency working on cybercrime. There are multiple agencies that deal with this topic, the US Postal Investigators (also special agents) and Secret Service agents(as part of the Treasury Dept.) have significant resources devoted.
... but instead with the capability of field agents or investigators to actually understand the crime. The majority of field agents aren't recruited for their technical prowess -- they're selected for physical capability, trustworthiness, confidence, attention to detail, etc.
Knowing the ins and outs of piracy, computer logic, techy sub-culture, and the history of networked data-transfer devices/wire-fraud comes with a completely different generation of learning and they're not going to abondon their current force for a brand new set of rookies.
Of course it's low. You don't think their employee training on computer usage and literacy works much better than the private sector, do ya?
Let's go back to the beginning. The DOD have never gotten along with the CIA. Now the major reason was that the Generals have always felt that they should be the ones controlling the reigns of intelligence. So the DOD created the DIA and has traditionally kept the NSA under quazi military control. (I have couple relatives who are Air Force liguists who work at Ft. Meade. Doesn't take a genius to figure where on Ft. Meade they work...) Traditionally the State Department and the CIA have had a very close working relationship. One of the students in the class is a former US Marine who worked at various Embassy's around the world during his 8 years in the service. Depending on the posting, he estimated that half - if not more - of the Embassy staff were really Company employees, as he put it.
After 9/11 we decided, "Hey let's give counter-terrorism to the FBI." Big mistake. FBI culture is dominated by the reactive field agents that carry the guns. In order to be effective in counter-terrorism you need to be proactive. And that means you need nerds with PhD.'s looking at the information collected by the boys with guns in the field trying to figure out what happens next. The current FBI culture treats the annalists, those not carrying a gun, as any other support staff. To "The Boys with Guns" (As one of the profs in the department that spent from 2001 - 2004 working as an analyst at the FBI while doing post doctoral work at Georgetown), the Nerds in Suits with PhD.'s were no different than janitors and secretaries in their world view. And that's not being effective.
One of the professors in our department is a former FBI counter-terrorism anayist. He quit in 2004 because "The boys with the guns wouldn't listen to the nerds with the PhD's in Middle Eastern studies." Further more, the professor's parents were from Pakistan/India (it was still one region when they came to the US in the late 1940's), so since he looked like "them" the FBI culture tended not to listen to him and his colleagues.
My solution would be to adopt the British model. The FBI plays New Scotland Yard, NSA continues on as GCHQ, the CIA becomes MI6, and we create a domestic spying agency similar to MI5.
Hell, I'd even vote for Clinton and her Universal Healthcare (like the NIH). After all if that works for the Brits et. al. than domestic spying will work for us too!
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Someone tagged this story "good". That's wonderful, because I often have a lot of trouble finding stories that are "good", or related to "good". Now, some helpful slashdotter has just absolutely definitely NOT abused the tagging system, and made sure that people know that this is one of the many articles relating to "good". Bravo.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
BTW: They're really shooting a sequel: Untitled X-Files Sequel.
Well, we know only two are dedicated to the xfiles, and begrudgingly at that.
OT: I pronounce luser as leuser, i.e. "user" with the l-sound prepended. I'm told it's more common to pronounce it as simply "loser".
Sorry, but both of these pronunciations are wrong. It's spelled "luser", but the "l" is silent.
If the value could be a high as 89.5% then it isn't exactly less than or equal to 24.5 is it?
Also, I'd like to point out that your sig is false. From the
In the case of this post, your comments on the FBI were provocative, implying they want to torture and imprison innocent people, or that the **AA are in cahoots with them. It's both factually false, and unsubtly put. Mod parent down.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Yo mama's so fat that when they showed her a picture of her feet, she couldn't identify them, bitch!
the actual agents assigned are Scully and Mulder - so there's nothing to worry about.
Except all the alien abductions that will never get investigated now...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It seems to me that the higher priority online crime becomes, the more likely that not only are civil liberties restricted in ever-greater statutory and executive regulations, but the greater become the incentives for governments to step in and limit the "freedoms" inherent in a largely-untaxed open internet. I personally would prefer for the internet to be a lesser concern for the time being for government agencies, as it is one of the few cases where I DO feel the market has adequate and more-than-adequate responses to security risks without any governmental "help."
OTOH, if governments around the world do move toward taxing and regulating more heavily (some might say, 'as they continue' to do so), then the as-yet mostly-conceptual freenets and darknets of the world will increasingly be the new de-facto internet, at least for the technologically clued-in.
Argg, I'm an idiot.
:)
I blame two straight days of code reviews and insider trading/diversity/harassment training. It apparently rotted my brain in addition to putting me in a horrible mood