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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?'"
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.