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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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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?
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!
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