http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,45071,00.html By Declan McCullagh 2:00 a.m. July 7, 2001 PDT WASHINGTON -- It turns out that Robert Mueller, President Bush's pick to revive the FBI's ailing image, has plenty of experience prosecuting computer crime. This week Bush nominated Mueller, 56, to succeed Louis Freeh -- whose eight years as FBI director was marked by a series of embarrassing scandals including the murders at Ruby Ridge, the Robert Hanssen spy scandal and misplaced documents in the Timothy McVeigh case. Freeh was a lifelong East Coast fed. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, he graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and won acclaim for his work against Sicilian gangsters who used pizza parlors to sell illicit drugs. Mueller, by contrast, is more West Coast. He started his legal career at a San Francisco law firm in 1973, worked in San Francisco as a federal prosecutor for six years and is currently the U.S. Attorney for Northern California. Mueller has also done stints in Boston and Washington, D.C. "He really knows the crime issues in the (tech) industry," said George Kennedy, the district attorney for Santa Clara County who has worked with Mueller over the last three years. "He will be a good man to have at the head of the FBI for those types of crimes." After moving back to San Francisco in 1999, Mueller created the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property unit in San Jose. The group is credited with prosecuting cases that include alleged hackers Benjamin Troy Breuninger ("Kon"), Jerome T. Heckenkamp ("MagicFX") and Max Ray Butler ("Max Vision"). In May, Freeh announced he would retire, two years before his 10-year term was over. In the tech industry, Freeh was best known for the FBI's Carnivore surveillance system, his dogged opposition to encryption products and his support for more wiretap authority for agents. --- ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email isn-unsubscribeat_private
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