At the Black Hat hacker convention in Las Vegas this month, James Finch, head of the FBI’s Cyber Division, talked to the Washington Post about crime and the Internet. The FBI’s Cyber Division is responsible for investigating high-tech crimes, including computer and network intrusions and child pornography cases. Each of the FBI’s 56 field offices has a cyber squad, which uses a pool of 500 to 600 agents specializing in the area. Says Finch: “A lot of people just don’t take the basic precautions, or don’t know how to take them. Many people just don’t have the level of knowledge needed to safeguard themselves. The bar is raised every day.”
Finch believes that the federal government “doing a fairly good job of reaching and making people aware. Take, for example, http://www.lookstoogoodtobetrue.com or http://www.ic3.gov– those are public-awareness sites. [] the No. 1 criticism in many cases is that the government has overreached; they’re reaching into our privacy, into our lives; they’re interfering too much. Well, what more do we do than to try to make people aware, provide them with a place to go if they believe they’ve been harmed on the Internet? We can’t force people to become more aware.”
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802186.html