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...

[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:

[SnoopJeDi]

You realize this is only talking about the FBI, right?

And that this doesn't take into consideration the cybercrime divisions of several other government agencies?

Right?

Re:

[DerekLyons]

You realize the FBI isn't responsible for DoD security don't you?

Re:

[DerekLyons]

Here in the real world, investigating espionage and being responsible for security are not the same thing. Maybe in ten or twelve years, when you graduate high school, you'll have learned that words mean things.

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.

Re:

[Anonymous Curmudgeon]

Speaking of ratios, it's interesting to note that, according to the article, they're requesting $258.5 million for 659 field agents. Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.

Also, how exactly do you define a field agent, in this case? Is the guy who hangs out in chat rooms, pretending to be a 14 year old girl a field agent, or are field agents the ones kicking down doors and confiscating computer equipment?

Re:

[Firethorn]

Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else? I suppose it depends on what kind of support staff gets lumped into that bucket.

Exactly.

Say an Agent makes $60k. You have to pay for his health care(it's like a military job in that respect), another $10k or so. Training, $10-100k. Taxes, ~$4k. Equipment, $2k. Admin support, retirement benefits, $10k

Office space, new furniture, computer, etc... ~10k,

Non-field supervisor: $150k per 10 field agents, $15k each.
Vehicle: $40k.
Travel: $40k or more.

I

Re:

[pokerdad]

Does the $392,261 per agent seem excessive to anyone else?

Its not the agents that are expensive, its the mathematicians [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[bmgoau]

Perhaps in addition to your argument a simple listing of priorities isn't adequate to describe the importance of thise priorities. For instance: 1. Staying alive 2. Maintaining physical security. 3. Making sure my computer is secure. Those 3 priorites will never have a proportional amount of resources dedicated to them in a persons life.

Taking it to the extreme. I would rather have the FBI (or what good is left of it) investigating organised crime, murders and even corporate crime with 99% of its resources,

Re:

[syn3rg]

Parent is spot on: it's not something you throw Agents at, it's something you throw Information Analysts at.
The FBI has allocated 659 (out of 11,868; or 5.5%) Agents -- with the authority to arrest and prosecute -- to the Cyber division. However, it has allocated 492 (out of 2303, or 21.4%) of it's Information Analyst positions to the task. That's close to a quarter of the guys who would be the ones actually investigating Cybercrime anyway.

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.

Re:

[Tablizer]

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.
     

Re:Lobbyists

[dascritch]

and 2 agents are running after UFOs, 11th Top Priority

XF2 2009

[harmonica]

BTW: They're really shooting a sequel: Untitled X-Files Sequel [imdb.com].

Re:

[cybermage]

lobbying congress for more power.

Don't forget the enormous manpower that goes into investigating Congress.

Between time spent lobbying and investigating Congress, I wonder if the FBI has considered just eliminating Congress to free up resources. Probably the only delaying issue is trying to determine whether Cheney is part of the legislative branch.

Duh

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

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

...so they can lobby congress for more power, more effectively. If you can think of a better way, I'd like to hear it.

Whaaaa?

[Tablizer]

'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)
   

Duh!

[NEOtaku17]

Actually if the choices are listed horizontally all of them can be at the top of the list. Obviously the paper you were reading from to the user wasn't very well thought out.

Re:

[Tablizer]

Actually if the choices are listed horizontally all of them can be at the top of the list. Obviously the paper you were reading from to the user wasn't very well thought out.

You must be the user's offspring :-) I hope you are not serious. There were about 40 items. There is not near enough room to display them all horizontally, and the user would probably complain that I didn't put it on the far left, used too small a font, etc. etc. etc.
   

Re:

[pigiron]

Only a moron would give people 40 options and expect any meaningful feedback. You must work in IT.

Re:

[xenocide2]

So randomize the ballot. Your awesome computer skills can do this, no?

Re:

[Tablizer]

So randomize the ballot. Your awesome computer skills can do this, no?

It was more or less random IIRC. How is that going to solve the issue of users's favorite features not always being at the top anyhow? The point is that the user is not the brightest bulb.
       

Re:

[jareds]

You don't randomize the ballot once, and make 10,000 copies of the same ballot. You randomize the ballot 100 times, and make 100 copies of each ballot. Or more or less, but not ONE! Pot. Kettle. Black.

Re:

[autocracy]

Spraypaint. White.

Re:

[BlueTrin]

I received your last ballot and I saw that you put the meaningful choices on the right of the paper, can you put the all on the left goddamnit !

Re:

[BungaDunga]

Anyway, English is read from left to right so you'd still read the first items- well, first.

Re:

[Slightly Askew]

Just use CR without a LF. It is slightly more difficult to read, but all options are listed first.

Re:Whaaaa?

[The One and Only]

Everyone who's studied this research seriously knows that the proper protocol is to randomize the order.

Re:

[GMFTatsujin]

Randomizing the order of responses is a good step forward, but it still creates an unintentional bias.

More proper would be to randomize the order of each letter in the responses.

Re:

[The One and Only]

These kind of people think with their ego's, not statistics. You are looking for a math solution to essentially a psychology problem, not a math problem.

Random order is the standard mathematical solution to the standard psychological problem of cognitive bias arising from ordering issues. It does not solve the political problem of stupid users.

Re:

[Logic and Reason]

Actually, you can put everything at the top of the list, if you randomize the order each time someone views the ballot. In fact, that's standard practice to avoid exactly the problem your user was complaining about: results tend to get biased towards the beginning of the list of options.

Actually, they could all be at the top...

[alcmaeon]

...just not at the same time. You could take your list and make several iterations of it with heach having a different set of features listed toward the top. Present a different set to each respondent. That way, while you are doing yoru survey, you could eliminate any possible bias created by the listing order.

Espionage?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Only on its own citizens.

X Files

[Rank_Tyro]

What priority are the X-Files?

Re:X Files

[barry_the_bogan]

Last I heard, they just had two agents working on them.

the logical answer

[User 956]

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.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

... except that there are priorities other then the top 10. What about numbers 11-100? Perhaps the FBI is spreading out its resources to cover, I don't know... all the crime?

No, the only conclusion you can draw is that the top two uses of manpower for the FBI (anti-terrorism and counter-intelligence, according to TFA) each use at least 3.6% of resources. And I kinda hope it isn't more then 10-20 or so for each.

Re:

[stranger_to_himself]

And you forgot playing on Facebook. That's got to be quite high on the list.

Re:

[AuMatar]

Except it says dedicated. That means 100% time. My bet is that large sections of their workforce aren't dedicated to a single type of crime, but work on more than one.

Re:

[GospelHead821]

That simply isn't true. The top two priorities only need to take up only marginally more than 3.5% each. Just because they have a top-10 list doesn't mean that priorities 11-99 aren't taking up a significant fraction of manpower, even though no single priority claims more than 3.4%.

Re:

[Kjella]

Assuming of course, that the police has exactly ten priorities, and waste nothing on time that doesn't actually serve a priority. I'd say the police have roughly as many priorities as there are laws on the books (from the big to the extremely tiny), so I don't see them like dedicating all their resources to just a few crimes.

Re:

[Minwee]

First off, as others have pointed out, you are assuming that there are only ten priorities.

Second, and more importantly, you need to read the article summary again and try to see which weasel words apply to which statements.

[...] 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

Re:

[jefu]

I wonder if the distribution of resources might look something a Pareto(/Zipf) distribution, in which case the first two would have a very large part of the resources and anything after three would get (given that number three is at 3.3%) very small resource allocations.

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...

Nice try

[Nursie]

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.

Re:

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

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.

Um actually, it does have to do with crime. It's criminal to commit copyright infringement (at least in the US). Where the guy you downloaded the torrent from is located is irrelevant. If you download a pirated copy of a copyrighted work, you're committing cybercrime. And the fact that you seem to think the hyperbolic and irrational hatred of the RIAA/MPAA is "not unreasonable" does not chang

Re:

[computational super]

Who's complaining? Maybe the OP was suggesting that those 3.5% of agents ought to be focusing on priorities 4-10 and getting the FUCK off of my internet.

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

Re:

[shanen]

Is that list a bad joke? Maybe it's somehow a second-hand Gonzo joke? The American legal system is really that twisted up after a few years of neo-GOP misrule?

Actually, I suspect that it's distorted by misclassifications, which seems to be the norm of all government statistics these days. Most obviously, a lot of the computer-related crime probably gets refiled under higher priority categories. If a stock pump-and-dump scam is being run by Pakistani-based scammers, and there is any reason to suspect that th

Re:

[zippthorne]

Can we please stop using the prefix neo- on everything related to the right. Also I'd like to extend that courtesy to the left as well, should the need arise. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Unless you're a linguistic sadist, which I guess we can't discount given this is slashdot.

It's not "cute" nor does it evoke images of white supremacists as, I assume, was your intention. At least, it's the intention of almost everyone else in the past decade who uses that prefix in a political context.

Re:

[shanen]

The use of neo-GOP is deliberate. I suppose you can blame the neocons, though it's quite hard to understand why they created such a hypocritical label for themselves. The "neo" prefix is related to new, which is fundamentally opposed to the "old" stuff that the conservatives are supposed to be preserving, and the neo-GOP has almost no detectable ideological relationship to the old Republican party. Can you believe that the original Republican Party was a highly progressive organization.

On the other hand, it

Re:No prizes for guessing what the top priority is

[zippthorne]

Neoconservative was first coined in the 80s as a synonym for "Reagan Democrats." It was a derisive term for politicians who cynically took (or pretended to take) conservative positions that they do not believe on certain issues for the purpose getting elected. The implication was that they did not hold those views, and once elected would not behave conservatively as they suggested.

It certainly shouldn't be applied to people who have always been conservative. Ann Coulter is not a neocon. Both of the Clintons are. Newt Gingrich is not a neocon, but neither is Nancy Pelosi. Dick Cheney is not, but both the Bush presidents (41,43) could be considered to be. Rudy Guiliani is shaping up to be one. Barack Obama has cleverly been on the campaign trail (or otherwise occupied) during a number of policy-defining votes during his freshman term, so it remains to be seen just exactly what he is, and what he's pretending to be.

Neocons don't tend to control anything, principally because they, like moderates, like to stick their finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing before not really doing anything of substance.

There is no logical reason why the word would be repeated so often about people it does not describe except to create a new definition. One which is intended to associate conservatives with a certain kind of nazis by way of a common prefix. It is very tiring to watch this in action. Especially as it appears to be succeeding amongst the ill-informed, non-critically thinking masses.

Re:

[shanen]

Interesting revisionist version of history. Not surprised you left off the citations, since the sources I've read make it sound like you're blowing it out of your arse to confuse the realities. I don't suppose you've ever heard of the University of Chicago and some guy who was teaching there... What was his name? Oh yeah. And you left out the part about the Southern Democrats AKA racists leftover from the Civil War.

Re:

[rtechie]

Neoconservative was first coined in the 80s as a synonym for "Reagan Democrats." It was a derisive term

The term "neoconservative" was invented in the late 1970s by former 1960s liberal intellectuals disillusioned with liberal ideals, or "mugged by reality" as Irving Kristol (a key neocon) put it.

The term has changed meaning over time to reflect the "empire building" wing of conservatism, as opposed to the isolationist wing. So a "neocon" today is a conservative who supports broad military intervention and "spreading American values" overseas.

Re:No prizes for guessing what the top priority is

[Kamineko]

Priority 11 - Serve the Public Trust
Priority 12 - Protect the Innocent
Priority 13 - Uphold the Law

No, wait!

Re:

[Lord Ender]

Terrorism does not deserve its own priority. It falls under violent crime and espionage.

Basic Math

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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 must be less than or equal to 24.5% since 3.5% * 7 = 24.5% !

Oh, was that supposed to be rhetorical?
Sorry. This slashdot, we are all pedants, with the occasional pedantess, here.

Re:

[thatskinnyguy]

The answer is easier than that! 100% - 3.5% = 96.5%!

Where did that 24.5% come from?

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

I can't tell if you're joking or not, however assuming you aren't: that would only work if Cyber Crime was #1 on the FBI priority list, rather then #3.

Re:

[thatskinnyguy]

Really all the math done in all the posts is speculative shite at best. There's no other option than make a joke about it.

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

Given that the OP said it must be equal or less it certainly isn't incorrect. 24.5 is the very maximum it could possibly be.

Re:

[mqduck]

I can't tell which part you're missing, but the answer is "less than or equal to 96.5%". Since "the remaining Top Ten priorities" include 1, 2 and 4 through 10, they have exactly 96.5% of all agents if there are no more than ten "priorities" in the FBI. (P.S. Fight the power! Down the the FBI! Revolution!)

Not pedantic enough.

[pavon]

That isn't correct because there are other tasks that they are working besides their top 10. They could have another 100 tasks which each occupy just 0.5% of the staff, meaning that only half of their staff is working on the top 10 priorities. Secondly, just because something has higher priority does not necisarily mean that it has a higher number of staff allocated to it, especially if it just recently increased in priority, and they don't have enough people that are proficient in that area. Therefore, the

Re:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Yeah...
I'm wondering if you fully understand the meaning of less than or equal to?

Re:

[computational super]

Actually, you didn't specify if you meant exclusive or inclusive or, leaving open the possibility that you meant less than and equal to at the same time, rendering the remainder of your post meaningless.

Out-pedant that!

Are you really that dense?

[pavon]

If the value could be a high as 89.5% then it isn't exactly less than or equal to 24.5 is it?

I must apolgize

[pavon]

Argg, I'm an idiot.

I blame two straight days of code reviews and insider trading/diversity/harassment training. It apparently rotted my brain in addition to putting me in a horrible mood :)

Top two priorities

[c0d3h4x0r]

'If the FBI's third most-important priority claims just over 3.5 percent of its active agents, ... '

...then what the hell are the top two priorities?

My guess:

1. Being the MPAA's and RIAA's paid/bribed bitch.

2. Illegally detaining, interrogating, and torturing innocent people in the name of "fighting terror".

Re:

[deniable]

1. The **AAs' paid bitches are politicians. They give the orders and have a better ROI. Remember kids, an honest politician is one that stays bought.
2. The FBI is too open for torture. You use a sub-contractor's cousin's business associate for that.

No, their most likely top priorities are turf wars with other agencies and maximizing their budget.

Mod parent down, troll or flamebait

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

1. Being the MPAA's and RIAA's paid/bribed bitch.

Y'know, I can't think of a single time the FBI has intervened on MPAA/RIAA business, let alone enough times to consider it any sort of priority.

Also, I'd like to point out that your sig is false. From the /. FAQ: [slashdot.org]

Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait.
Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined

This is good news!

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

I thought this was a news site????

[zappepcs]

Since when was it news that you can't arrest your boss? If the FBI were prosecuting cyber criminals, they would have to arrest people at MD, MS, RIAA/MPAA and other 'defenders of American freedom' in the course of business.

My experience with the FBI's cybercrime division

[sammy baby]

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 [infragard.net] 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.

Cancelling a mismod

[el_munkie]

Please disregard, I hit "overrated" when I meant to hit "insightful".

Re:My experience with the FBI's cybercrime divisio

[Tim C]

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.

In other words, a bunch of people who perhaps were technical once, a long time ago, but most likely weren't and definitely aren't now.

Sounds like the FBI guy was pitching his presentation a

Re:My experience with the FBI's cybercrime divisio

[jollyreaper]

He was talking about "warez," but he was pronouncing it "Juarez."

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!

Re:My experience with the FBI's cybercrime divisio

[Nimey]

It's not just suits and feds who pronounce it like that. A former boss (mom & pop computer shop) who was into the scene (but TBH mispronounced several things) pronounced it about like that.

OT: I pronounce luser as leuser, i.e. "user" with the l-sound prepended. I'm told it's more common to pronounce it as simply "loser".

Re:

[eln]

OT: I pronounce luser as leuser, i.e. "user" with the l-sound prepended. I'm told it's more common to pronounce it as simply "loser".

Sorry, but both of these pronunciations are wrong. It's spelled "luser", but the "l" is silent.

Why does the FBI have to do everything?

[r_jensen11]

I would think that the NSA should be on top of the serious stuff more than the FBI. I mean, why else would they be so secretive? How many other US agencies are there where you can't reveal your true identity to many people even after you retire?

Re:

[(H)elix1]

I would think that the NSA should be on top of the serious stuff more than the FBI. I mean, why else would they be so secretive?

Historically, the NSA's charter was everyone outside the US, while the FBI was everyone inside the US. This separation is why many folks are less than happy to find the NSA (might) be not only listening in on foreigners chatting and figuring out relationships, but might have expanded that to include the US (under the idea that a foreign national is communicating with a US based p

Yup

[planetheidi]

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.

is it just me...

[christopherjrider]

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.

Re:

[clarkkent09]

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.

Re:

[bcattwoo]

It is also silly to try to draw any conclusions simply based on the number of agents involved. It is quite possible that lesser priorities could have more agents assigned. The cybercrimes unit may operate more efficiently with fewer agents than say the people fighting organized crime. Or maybe they have more stuff they can farm out to contractors. To a degree, number of agents assigned is meaningless.

Yeah, I know.

[CompMD]

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.

Re:

[tacocat]

Maybe Kansas is just a good home town kind of state and not rampant with crime but white picket fences and apple pie?

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.

"Distant #3"? "Only 3.6"?

[dragisha]

Is this only a math understanding problem or what? How many priorities/duties do they have? Four? Ten? Or hundreds?

Are we sure people discussing this know 3.6% means "1/28 of WHOLE FBI agent staff"?

Or it's only "ohhhhh, cyber something! nerds will like it! Approved!"?

Busy, But...

[maz2331]

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?

Cha-Ching!

[BAlkyMAn]

Man that is around 391K per agent. I take it there is a pork project or two in there, but really that is a lot of dough, especially for cyber-crime where you don't necessarily need much besides servers/connectivity, experts, and a lot of time. I would love to see the break-down of costs. I have a feeling they aren't looking for the most economical route to catch cyber criminals. http://parthian-shot.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]

From a person who has done this before....

[Anonymous Coward]

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, attendin

Yeah, because crimes are not commited "online"

[iamacat]

Somewhere off the Internet, real children, women and adults are getting harmed. That should be priority of FBI rather than pictures being circulated online or intellectual (literally imaginary if you think of it) property. When all crimes are committed "online" we can all sigh in relief and confine offenders to Second Life jails.

Re:

[iamacat]

This doesn't appear to be under jurisdiction of FBI. After all, you can not just go to another country and arrest someone without either declaring a war or breaking US and international law. We are perfectly capable of doing the later, but I still don't believe we are so reckless to put nuke controls on Internet. Otherwise, there is no need for other countries to build missile shields. Just DDOS our routers and feel free to strike.

It should be a distant #18483 priority

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a target of an FBI cyber-crime investigation, launched against me by a greedy former business partner who wanted to mess up my life. The investigation was based on nothing more than bullshit opinion letter written by that guy's good friend who happened to be a lawyer. It took me about a year and tens of thousands of dollars to explain basic copyright law to this FBI agent. When they figured out that there was no crime or misconduct, they went away... but I didn't get any compensation for what had h

Re:

[1u3hr]

I have a feeling that a lot of their "cyber crime" investigations are not crimes at all

As TFA notes, most of the arrests are related to kiddie porn. Which is disgusting, but catching guys who like to look at it is only very marginally related to preventing the acts depicted. Consider slasher movies, a popular genre. Lots of people find these diverting. Hardly any actually go on to commit grisly acts of homicide or torture. Just liking to look at photos of perverse acts is not a good indicator of someone

Nothing to do with potential danger....

[eepok]

... but instead with the capability of field agents or investigators to actually understand the crime. The majority of field agents aren't recruited for their technical prowess -- they're selected for physical capability, trustworthiness, confidence, attention to detail, etc.

Knowing the ins and outs of piracy, computer logic, techy sub-culture, and the history of networked data-transfer devices/wire-fraud comes with a completely different generation of learning and they're not going to abondon their current

FBI needs to back to what it was good at...

[ducomputergeek]

Investigating major crimes. I started working on my masters this fall, part-time as I still work, and one of the classes I've been taking is on Security & Foriegn policy. I can make a case that the entire security structure in the United States needs a complete overhaul. The existing agencies have fogotten what their mission is: to protect US national security interests at home and abroad, and become intrenched beltway beurcracies.

Let's go back to the beginning. The DOD have never gotten along wit

Oh good...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Someone tagged this story "good". That's wonderful, because I often have a lot of trouble finding stories that are "good", or related to "good". Now, some helpful slashdotter has just absolutely definitely NOT abused the tagging system, and made sure that people know that this is one of the many articles relating to "good". Bravo.

Yeah, but...

[Master of Transhuman]

the actual agents assigned are Scully and Mulder - so there's nothing to worry about.

Except all the alien abductions that will never get investigated now...

Re:

[Tablizer]

These must be a tough times for terrorist pedophile cyber criminals

Or an even a tougher time for the FBI clerk who has to categorize this case.

Seriously, most non-trivial mutually-exclusive classification systems have serious flaws. Many things can fall into multiple categories, but beurocrats often like one and only one category for each case/situation so that they add up and can be budgeted for.