Slashdot Mirror
Report Critical of FBI Cybercrime-Fighting Ability
coondoggie writes "Despite a push to bulk up its security expertise, the FBI in some case lacks the skills to properly investigate national security intrusions. That was one of the major conclusions found in the US Department of Justice inspector general audit of the FBI's ability to address national security cyberthreats today. The DOJ looked at 10 of the 56 FBI field offices and interviewed 36 agents. Of those interviewed, 13 'lacked the networking and counterintelligence expertise to investigate national security intrusion cases.'"
And why would anyone take a job at the FBI if they can work in the private sector?
So 23 had the networking and counterintelligence expertise to investigate national security intrusion cases. Sounds pretty darned good to me.
So... on one side FBI don't have the skills to investigate intrusion, on the other side we should trust them enough to allow remote uninstalling the CoreBoot trojan, eh?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Funny, investigating external intrusions just feels like something I'd expect the CIA or NSA to be handling instead.
Now that the Chinese have caught up to us in 1s and 0s it's time to move on to the much safer YOLD (Yodeling Over Long Distance) model of data transfer.
The Slashdot story misreports the data, as usual. The actual report says that 36% of the agents who were assigned to national security related cyber investigations self-reported that they did not have the necessary expertise for the job they were doing.
And those are the national-security related cases, which the FBI considers to be the most important category. It's probably worse at the regular computer-related crime level.
They're trying. The FBI actually runs agents through "A+" training, and "Linux for Law Enforcement". After 5 years as an FBI agent on the "cyber" side, agents should be able to configure a Linux kernel and have an in-depth knowledge of the Windows registry. Those agents also have to learn all the regular FBI agent skills.
The report points out that 41% of the FBI's "cyber" force is tied up investigating child pornography, while only 4% work on Internet fraud. That's why they're doing so badly on online crime.
True, the FBI appear to be doing their Cybecrime fighting well, keeping the government safe against whistlblowers. They usually get their man too.
Having worked with a few Special Agents to break an international paedophile ring a few years ago, I can say from experience, the F.B.I have very few agents well equipped and extremely clued up. I was lucky to get in touch with the right special agents, although I hit a complete brick wall beforehand with agents who's mission in life was "COFEE and donuts" excuse the cofee joke http://www.microsoft.com/industry/government/solutions/cofee/default.aspx
The same is of Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police, who have people in IT that are complete idiots. At the end of this investigation, I only got a thank you off one senior special agent and Scotland Yard just completely blanked me. The officers from the Metropolitan Police decided to take all the credit for my hard work.
If it was not for Special Agent Daniels, my faith in helping out as a hacker would have been eroded many years ago.
All cows eat grass!
A few years ago, someone cracked my wife's VOIP account and was using it to run a phishing-type bank scam. They were less than sophisticated in their methods, and with the help of the admins at the ISP from which the attack was coming, we quickly tracked down the source. The admin agreed to leave things in place long enough for me to contact the FBI. This I did, explaining that the attack was in progress "right now" and we had copious information that would make law enforcement action a no-brainer. Again, I reported an in-progress banking scam to the FBI. What I got from them was a promise that an agent would call me the next day. That's it. She didn't, and the other admin and I did what we could (precious little) to prevent more crime. Maybe the call-taker didn't understand the issue and it's immediacy. That's a problem in and of itself, and rather supports TFA's premise. Whatever the case, the message was loud and clear. Federal law enforcement does not pay attention to "the little people". Maybe it's indifference, or may be it's technical incompetence. It is definitelty fail.
FBI is government, government only gets money if there is a problem to fix. If they reported they were the best in the world, their funding would get cut and they wouldn't be able to sustain. The more critical findings are of the state of something in government, the more money is thrown it's way.
From fbijobs.gov: 12. How much are FBI Special Agents paid? Special Agent trainees at the FBI Academy are paid as GS-10, step 1 ($43,441) plus the Quantico, VA locality adjustment (17.50%) during their time at the FBI Academy. This equates to $51,043 on an annualized basis (or $1,963 per each two-week pay period). Newly assigned Special Agents are paid as GS-10, step 1 ($43,441) plus locality pay and availability pay. Locality pay (which ranges from 12.5% to 28.7% of base salary depending upon office assignment) is additional compensation to account for differences in the labor market between different areas. Availability pay is a 25% increase in adjusted salary (base salary + locality pay) for all Special Agents due to their requirement to average a 50-hour work week over the course of the year. Thus, with the locality and availability pay adjustments, new Special Agents in their first Field Offices earn between $61,100 and $69,900, depending upon the region of the country to which they are assigned. New Special Agents assigned to certain designated high-cost offices (New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Washington D.C., Boston and Newark) may also be paid a one-time relocation bonus of approximately $22,000 to help offset higher real estate and living costs. In order to qualify for the relocation bonus, new Special Agents must be assigned to one of the designated high-cost offices and they must be moving from a lower cost area to a different geographical area with a higher cost of living. For example, a new Agent assigned to Washington, D.C. would make a base salary of $43,441 (GS-10, step 1 on the Law Enforcement Officers' salary table) + locality pay of $7,602 (based on Washington, D.C.'s locality adjustment of 17.5%) + availability pay of $12,761 (25% of base + locality) for a total salary of $63,804 their first year. If the new Special Agent qualified for the relocation bonus (e.g., moving from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.), they would also receive a one-time payment of approximately $22,000.
True, it is not. However those who work for the FBI as agents, and potential candidates, feel a sense of helping the greater good, in similar fashion a military service man/woman would. Hence, the argument of why take a job in the FBI instead of private sector, was saying that not just money is someones motivation.