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FBI Opens Seattle Computer Crime Squad
OSAll Staff
The FBI announced yesterday that they opened another computer crime squad office at their Seattle bureau.
The office, which will be made up of ten agents, marks another increase in the FBIīs focus on computer crime. For months now, the FBI has been increasing its involvement in computer crime across the country.
The FBI has the option to pick up computer crime cases across the country, depending on their seriousness and whether or not they involve federal computers or interstate commerce. The increase in computer crime budget, coupled by the opening of new computer crime squads, suggest that they expect one (or both) of two things: an upturn in federal computer crime or an upturn in the investigation of that crime.
An FBI agent with the Washington, DC computer crime squad said that the former was true, however. "Prosecutable computer crime has been increasing every year. We donīt expect that trend to reverse," he explained.
The last several years have seen an increase in Web defacements, but large-scale computer crimes have decreased somewhat. Crimes on the scale of ten million dollar computer bank heists just haven't occurred recently.
The FBI agent went on to say, "site defacements arenīt all we expect. Some major things may be coming around the corner. We just want to be prepared."
The FBI does seem to understand that most site defacements are simple pranks, and so they arenīt intent on investigating them to the full extent possible. They are preparing to if they keep increasing numerically, however. Thatīs one possible explanation for the increase in computer crime bureaus. |
