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?'"
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.
Everyone knows that the FBI's most important priority, and the largest percentage of their manpower is devoted to lobbying congress for more power.
Same with big corporations. Gates' clever (and misleading) lobbying for more H-1B's is a prime example.
Table-ized A.I.
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."
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.
It is kind of silly. 3rd highest priority seems very high, far above organized crime, corruption, violent crimes etc. The article makes is sound as if FBI doesn't care about cybercrime when in fact its exactly the opposite.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Wow!! Mod Parent UP!!!
I never thought of it like this before, and yet it makes a lot of sense.
You hear of some government departments, like the UK Child Protection Agency, who seem to do absolutely nothing, yet still consume large amounts of taxpayers money, and keep on doing this year on year. You guess they must be doing something in their flash buildings, but what?
Now I realise they are making up next year's budget proposals, amortising last year's, deciding on the division of the spoils, creating projected future figures of income and expenditure..........
Could you ever have a government department where 100% of the staff were engaged in justifying their existence? I wonder what the maximum deliverers/passengers ratio is in practice?