FC: FBI's anti-hacker cops aren't working out, GAO report says

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Photo of Mike Vatis, until recently the director of the NIPC:
http://www.mccullagh.org/image/10/mike-vatis-nipc.html

GAO report in question:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01323.pdf

-Declan

***********

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44019,00.html
   
   U.S.'s Defenseless Department
   By Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   12:30 p.m. May 23, 2001 PDT
   
   WASHINGTON -- When the U.S. government created the National
   Infrastructure Protection Center in February 1998 to thwart "cyber
   criminals," officials couldn't stop talking about how the feds were
   finally fighting back against the hacker menace.
   
   Former Attorney General Janet Reno said at the time that the new
   agency would "pursue criminals who attack or employ global networks"
   -- and that without the NIPC, "the nation will be at peril."
   
   Three years later, it's the NIPC that's in peril -- of being dubbed a
   poorly-organized, ill-conceived bureaucracy that more established
   agencies routinely ignore and that has not lived up to the promises
   its proponents once made.
   
   Instead of becoming a highly-sensitive nerve center that responds to
   computer intrusions, congressional investigators have concluded that
   the NIPC has turned into a federal backwater that is surprisingly
   ineffective in pursing malicious hackers or devising a plan to protect
   electronic infrastructures. The NIPC received $32 million in 1999 and
   $28 million in 2000, not counting items like office space and
   telephones provided by the FBI.
   
   The remarkable 108-page report from the General Accounting Office
   that was released Tuesday shows how bureaucracy can defeat the best
   intentions of Congress and the White House.

   [...]



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