Report Critical of FBI Cybercrime-Fighting Ability 56
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.'"
Typical Slashdot editor incompetence (Score:5, Informative)
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.
No surprise here (Score:4, Informative)