FBI wants more power to tackle hacking

THE US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wants closer ties with the Central Intellligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) in order to deal with the hacking threat.

FBI director Robert Mueller spoke at the San Francisco Commonwealth club yesterday and said that closer links are needed if the US is to tackle its third biggest threat, hacking.

This means that computer crimes come after terrorism and espionage on the security organisations' to-do list. Although the FBI, CIA and NSA are already collaborating on some investigations, Mueller said that there is a need for more cooperation.

"We have had to adjust our organisation structure," he said, according to the Financial Times, as he suggested that perhaps something more concrete is needed.

Collaboration is one thing, but Mueller also wants more power over communications and said that the FBI needs the right to monitor social networking services and accounts, something that no one else is likely to agree with.

Such insight is important, according to the FBI director, because forewarned is forearmed, and access to social networking could give FBI investigators warnings about attacks and threats before they are realised. µ