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

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Wed May 23 2001 - 13:49:32 PDT

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    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 (declanat_private)
       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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