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?'"

Comments

It's not important yet...

[hobo sapiens]

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.

Re:It's not important yet...

[vishbar]

Maybe we're looking at this from the wrong angle? Perhaps they view cybercrime as a division that you don't necessarily just throw agents at. They may only have a specific number of agents with the specific training necessary to prosecute cybercrime cases.

I'm just saying that perhaps looking at simple agent ratios wouldn't necessarily be an accurate reflection of the amount of attention that cybercrime receives. The other jobs may be more man-power intensive, even though they may be lower down on the priority list.

Lobbyists

[Bonker]

Everyone knows that the FBI's most important priority, and the largest percentage of their manpower is devoted to lobbying congress for more power.

Only on Slashdot

[the_skywise]

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...

No prizes for guessing what the top priority is

[clarkkent09]

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

And how is this a problem???

[rwyoder]

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.