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Combating Economic Espionage and Trade Secret Theft

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Statement for the Record

Good morning Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Graham, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here with you today to discuss the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s efforts to combat economic espionage and trade secret theft.

Scope of the Problem

Theft of trade secrets occurs when someone knowingly steals or misappropriates a trade secret to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner. Similarly, economic espionage occurs when a trade secret is stolen for the benefit of a foreign government, foreign instrumentality, or foreign agent. Both crimes are covered by the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, Title 18, Sections 1831 and 1832 of the U.S. Code.

U.S.-based businesses, academic institutions, cleared defense contractors, and government agencies are increasingly targeted for economic espionage and theft of trade secrets by foreign entities, often with state sponsorship and backing. The Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, using estimates from academic literature, has estimated losses from economic espionage to be in the tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the American economy.

Our foreign adversaries and competitors are determined to acquire, steal, or transfer a broad range of trade secrets in which the United States maintains a definitive innovation advantage. This technological lead gives our nation a competitive advantage in today’s globalized, knowledge-based economy. Protecting this competitive advantage is vital to our economic security and our national security. Trade secret theft has hit some of the nation’s best-known companies, such as DuPont and Goodyear. To highlight one case in the news earlier this year, a federal jury convicted three defendants in the DuPont case—Walter Liew; Liew’s company, USA Performance Technology Incorporated; and Robert J. Maegerle—of 20 charges, including economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. Liew and Maegerle stole trade secrets from DuPont and sold the information to state-owned companies in China.

Fighting economic espionage and theft of trade secrets from U.S.-based companies is a top priority of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division (CD). In 2010, CD created the Economic Espionage Unit, a specialized unit focused solely on prosecuting cases under the Economic Espionage Act. Located within CD’s Counterespionage Section, the Economic Espionage Unit works with private sector partners to investigate and prosecute trade secret theft. Within CD, this unit’s caseload has continued to increase every year since its formation. In fact, from fiscal year (FY) 2009 to the end of FY 2013, the number of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets cases overseen by the unit increased by more than 60 percent. Economic espionage and theft of trade secrets represent the largest growth area among the traditional espionage cases overseen by CD’s Counterespionage Section.

Economic espionage and theft of trade secrets are increasingly linked to the insider threat and the growing threat of cyber-enabled trade secret theft. The employee who poses an insider threat may be stealing information for personal gain or may be serving as a spy to benefit another organization or country. Foreign competitors steal trade secrets by aggressively targeting and recruiting insiders; conducting economic intelligence through bribery, cyber intrusions, theft, and dumpster diving (in search of intellectual property or discarded prototypes); and establishing joint ventures with U.S. companies.

Long gone are the days when a spy needed physical access to a document to steal it, copy it, or photograph it, where modern technology now enables global access and transmission instantaneously.

China often is cited as particularly active in the theft of trade secrets. According to a report submitted to Congress by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in November 2012, China “depends on industrial espionage, forced technology transfers, and piracy and counterfeiting of foreign technology as part of a system of innovation mercantilism.”1 By obtaining what it needs illegally, China avoids the expense and difficulty of basic research and unique product development, the report concluded. Created by Congress in 2000, the Commission’s mandate is to monitor, investigate, and report to Congress on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

Enhanced Strategies for Law Enforcement

Officials across the U.S. government are pursuing a comprehensive strategy to counter economic espionage as part of a larger campaign against intellectual property theft. In furtherance of this initiative, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) formed a task force on intellectual property in February 2010. The task force works with the Office of the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC), located in the Executive Office of the President. In February 2013, IPEC issued the administration’s Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. The five-part strategy calls for focusing diplomatic efforts to protect trade secrets overseas; promoting voluntary best practices by private industry to protect trade secrets; enhancing domestic law enforcement operations; improving domestic legislation; and raising public awareness and stakeholder outreach. The FBI is also a partner at the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center). Together, the IPR Center’s 21 partner agencies facilitate the exchange of intellectual property theft information among federal government agencies and international partners, plan and coordinate joint domestic and international law enforcement operations, generate and de-conflict investigative leads from industry and the public, provide law enforcement training, and collaborate closely with industry partners on all forms of intellectual property crime.

The DOJ has also taken steps specifically to address economic espionage. Our partners in DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD), for example, are increasingly focused on deterring and disrupting these threats. The FBI works closely with NSD’s Counterespionage Section, whose leadership has deep experience and expertise in prosecuting economic espionage and related issues, and whose attorneys are, as the DuPont verdict shows, committed to prosecuting individuals and entities who commit and sponsor economic espionage by any means.

In addition, NSD, together with the Criminal Division, also established the National Security Cyber Specialists (NSCS) Network in 2012. This nationwide network of specially trained prosecutors who focus on cyber threats to the national security, including economic espionage, is actively working with the FBI to build cases against state sponsored cyber threat actors. The NSCS Network has also improved DOJ’s outreach to the private sector on cyber security issues, including cyber-based economic espionage, both to help prevent intrusions and to improve the government’s response when they occur.

FBI Outreach and Awareness Efforts

To raise public awareness and conduct stakeholder outreach, the FBI uses the Counterintelligence Strategic Partnership Program (CISPP) to mitigate the risks posed by foreign actors in illicitly acquiring sensitive technologies, advanced scientific research, classified U.S. government information, and trade secrets from private industry and academia. The CISPP network consists of more than 80 special agents experienced in counterintelligence who are known as strategic partnership coordinators (SPCs). The SPCs counter foreign intelligence threats to academia and private industry by conducting in-person classified and unclassified threat briefings. SPCs provide an early referral mechanism for reports of possible acts of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and cyber intrusions. Last fiscal year, SPCs conducted more than 7,500 presentations and briefings about these threats. At the national level, the CISPP manages the Business Alliance and Academic Alliance programs,2 which foster national and local partnerships between the FBI and private industry and academia.

SPCs currently maintain more than 15,000 contacts nationwide, consisting of local businesses, academic institutions, and cleared defense contractors. The counterintelligence threat briefings and intelligence products provided by SPCs on current trends and indicators help companies detect, deter, and defend against attacks to sensitive proprietary information from foreign adversaries.

This spring, the FBI released a new threat awareness film dramatizing the risks of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets to the American economy. Called The Company Man: Protecting America’s Secrets, this 37-minute film is based on a trade secrets case recently investigated by the FBI. In the real-life case, a group of conspirators tried to recruit a veteran employee to steal the trade secrets they needed to build a competing plant in China. The film will raise the awareness of audiences about the threat of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets and help organizations understand the indicators to watch for so they proactively detect attempts by insiders and foreign agents to illicitly acquire trade secrets and intellectual property. These showings will also encourage viewers to report suspicious activity to the FBI, and help the SPCs build relationships with contacts in local industry and academia. Copies of The Company Man DVD have been shipped to the FBI’s network of SPCs, who are showing the film and handing out educational materials during in-person screenings. The SPCs answer questions from audience members and are available for short discussions about economic espionage and theft of trade secrets afterwards.

Despite the comprehensive outreach efforts undertaken by the FBI, companies which discover misappropriation of their trade secrets, even misappropriation appearing to rise to the level of criminal trade secret theft, sometimes attempt to address the issue through private negotiations or civil litigation, rather than alert law enforcement. As one example of this problem, during a recent economic espionage investigation at a company, the FBI learned the company had been victimized previously on a separate occasion but pursued a civil action instead of contacting the FBI. The FBI is currently looking into whether this earlier incident involved criminal activity. The FBI is committed to ensuring companies have an established line of communication to report concerns about possible economic espionage or trade secret theft to law enforcement. But the FBI must assure companies the government will work to protect their proprietary information from disclosure during prosecution, so that more companies are willing to come forward and report concerns about possible trade secret theft.

Protecting the nation’s economy from this threat is not something the FBI can accomplish on its own. To effectively protect trade secrets, companies need to be proactive—by marking sensitive material as secret or proprietary information, limiting access to protected material, and monitoring who accesses it. Employees should receive regular training, and more frequent notices regarding company policies on protecting trade secrets. Companies should consider implementing non-disclosure agreements with employees to not divulge company proprietary information. If a given piece of information is critical to the long-term success and profitability of a company, the company should limit access to those employees who have a need to know. Further, organizations and companies should evaluate internal operations and policies to determine if current approaches are tailored to the types of risks and factors associated with trade secret misappropriation committed by corporate and state sponsors. For example, areas for evaluation might include: research and development compartmentalization, information and physical security policies, and human resource policies.

Companies also need to educate their employees about some of the warning signs of insider threat, and regularly explain how to report suspicious behavior. Some of these warning signs include working odd hours without authorization; taking home company proprietary information; and installing personal software, or personal media, on company equipment. Other warning signs include short trips to foreign countries without notification or for unexplained reasons, a sudden influx of wealth, or an employee living beyond his or her means. Companies need to get employees involved in protecting proprietary information and willing to come forward and report concerns about suspicious behavior. In many cases investigated by the FBI, co-workers don’t report concerns until after an arrest.

FBI investigators should be contacted as soon as an insider threat is suspected to ensure the passage of time does not hinder any investigation that may be required.

Increased Penalties for Offenders

In 2011, the administration recommended that Congress increase the statutory maximum sentence for economic espionage from 15 to 20 years. In addition, the Administration asked Congress to direct the U.S. Sentencing Commission to consider increasing the guideline range based on aggravated offense conduct in theft of trade secret and economic espionage cases. See Administration’s White Paper on Intellectual Property Enforcement Legislative Recommendations, March 2011, at 4-6 (available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ip_white_paper.pdf).

In 2012, Congress responded to the growing threat of economic espionage by approving tougher penalties for those convicted of the crime with passage of the Foreign and Economic Espionage Penalty Enhancement Act of 2012. Formerly, an individual responsible for economic espionage faced a maximum fine of $500,000, and organizations faced a maximum fine of $10 million. Congress passed legislation boosting the maximum fine applicable to individuals to $5 million, and organizations responsible for committing economic espionage now face penalties of the greater of up to $10 million or up to three times the value of stolen trade secrets.

Congress also directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to examine the sentencing guidelines for economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. Following public hearings in 2013, the commission approved sentencing guideline enhancements where a trade secret is taken out of the country or where a defendant knows the trade secret will benefit a foreign government.

Challenges

Often, the greatest challenge in prosecuting economic espionage, as opposed to trade secret theft, is being able to prove that the theft was intended to benefit a foreign government or foreign instrumentality. The beneficiary of the stolen trade secrets may be traced to an overseas entity, but obtaining evidence that proves the entity’s relationship with a foreign government can be difficult. The decision to pursue these cases under Section 1832 (theft of trade secrets) instead of Section 1831 (economic espionage) may depend upon the availability of foreign evidence and witnesses, diplomatic concerns, and the presence of classified or sensitive information required to prove the foreign nexus element. Since the law was passed in 1996, there have been 10 economic espionage convictions.

* * *

Theft of trade secrets and economic espionage is a significant and sustained threat to the nation’s economy and requires constant vigilance. The FBI is working to investigate and apprehend targets pursuing economic espionage against the United States.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I am now happy to answer any questions you may have.

1 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2012 Report to Congress, 112th Cong., 2d session (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2012): p. 21.

2 The Business Alliance and Academic Alliance programs develop partnerships with leaders from private industry and academia at the national level through the National Security Business Alliance Council (NSBAC) and the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board (NSHEAB). Both NSBAC and NSHEAB meet quarterly at FBI Headquarters.

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Dangerous Partners: Big Tech and Beijing

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism

Washington, D.C.

Statement for the Record

Chairman, ranking member, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the current threats to the United States homeland. Our nation continues to face a multitude of serious and evolving threats ranging from homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) to cyber criminals to hostile foreign intelligence services and operatives. Keeping pace with these threats is a significant challenge for the FBI. Our adversaries—terrorists, foreign intelligence services, and criminals—take advantage of modern technology to hide their communications; recruit followers; and plan and encourage espionage, cyber-attacks, or terrorism to disperse information on different methods to attack the U.S. homeland, and to facilitate other illegal activities.

Cyber Threats

Virtually every national security threat and crime problem the FBI faces is cyber-based or facilitated. We face threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, organized cyber syndicates, and terrorists. On a daily basis, these actors seek to steal our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas—things of incredible value to all of us and of great importance to the conduct of our government business and our national security. They seek to hold our critical infrastructure at risk and to harm our economy.

The FBI is investigating a wider-than-ever range of threat actors, from transnational organized cybercrime to nation-state adversaries to terrorists using social medial for recruiting and radicalization purposes. The scale, scope, speed, and impact of cyber threats is constantly evolving, which may explain why we are also seeing a blending of threats, such as nation state adversaries using criminal actors as proxies to mask their activities. The frequency and severity of malicious cyber activity on our nation’s networks have increased dramatically in the past decade when measured by the amount of corporate data stolen or deleted, the volume of personally identifiable information compromised, or the remediation costs incurred by U.S. victims. Companies that hold large amounts of Personally identifiable information (PII) are susceptible to loss of American’s personal data to criminal organizations, terrorists, and nation-state cyber actors. Hotel chains, airlines, health care companies, credit bureaus, government agencies, and cleared defense contractors have previously been victims of PII theft.

Cyber Criminal Trends

Cyber threats are not only increasing in size and scope, but are also becoming increasingly difficult and resource-intensive to investigate. Cyber criminals often operate through online forums, selling illicit goods and services, including tools that lower the barrier to entry for aspiring criminals and that can be used to facilitate malicious cyber activity. These criminals have also increased the sophistication of their schemes, which are more difficult to detect and more resilient to disruption than ever. In addition, whether located at home or abroad, many cyber actors are obfuscating their identities and obscuring their activity by using combinations of leased and compromised infrastructure in domestic and foreign jurisdictions. Such tactics make coordination with all of our partners, including international law enforcement partners, essential.

Increasingly sophisticated obfuscation techniques are also enabling actors to stealthily obtain data from victims or re-purpose victim computers into cryptocurrency-mining botnets. Botnets used by cyber criminals have been responsible for billions of dollars in damages over the past several years. The widespread availability of malicious software (malware) that can create botnets allows individuals to leverage the combined bandwidth of thousands, if not millions, of compromised computers, servers, or network-ready devices to disrupt the day-to-day activities of governments, businesses, and individual Americans.

Cyber threat actors are conducting ransomware attacks against U.S. systems, encrypting data and rendering systems unusable—thereby victimizing individuals, businesses, and even emergency service and public health providers. Our threat reporting has demonstrated that ransomware attacks are becoming more targeted, sophisticated, and costly, even as the overall frequency of ransomware attacks is holding steady or declining. Since early 2018, the incidence of broad, indiscriminate ransomware campaigns has sharply declined, while losses from ransomware attacks have increased significantly. Allow me to restate that for emphasis: while the number of reported attacks has gone down, the effects and impacts of the attacks are going up. Meanwhile, state and local governments have been particularly visible targets for ransomware attacks. However, ransomware campaigns have also heavily impacted health care organizations, industrial companies, and the transportation sector.

Business email compromise (BEC) remains a pervasive threat due to its low barrier of entry and maturing social engineering techniques, and cyber criminals almost certainly will continue to use BEC to target industries indiscriminately. BEC threat actors have widened their money laundering networks, including domestic transfers prior to laundering the money overseas, which presents challenges and opportunities for countering this type of fraud. Readily available online personal and business information enhances the reconnaissance capability of actors, providing BEC threat actors with more credible social engineering lures. Spoofed domains are seen in the majority of BEC attempts, and likely will remain a technique used by cyber actors. BEC attacks combining social engineering with network intrusions demonstrate an increase in attack sophistication that can use keyloggers or other malware to identify potential targets, such as business vendors, as well as sell access to or further exploit compromised systems.

Actors have learned that BEC is effective and are adapting lures to target human resources departments for PII, such as W-2 tax forms to commit stolen identity return fraud, rather than requesting wire transfers. Additionally, industry partners have observed BEC actors increasingly instruct victims to send automated clearinghouse transfers to prepaid cards in the initial laundering phase.

Nation State Activities: China

While several nation-states pose a cyber threat to U.S. interests, no other country presents a broader and more comprehensive threat to our ideas, innovation, and economic security than the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The threat takes many different forms. Beijing employs a whole-of-government approach to its intelligence collection strategy. While cyber network operations remain a primary and possibly increasing collection tool, the CCP also relies on techniques such as intellectual property theft, purchases of U.S. corporations, and physical and property theft to acquire U.S. data.

For example, less than a month ago, on February 10, the Department of Justice (DOJ), in coordination with the FBI, publicly unsealed an indictment against four Chinese cyber actors who allegedly acted as agents of the People’s Republic of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). All four actors are currently located in China. The alleged crimes occurred between May 13, 2017 and July 30, 2017. The actors targeted a software vulnerability to gain unauthorized access to Equifax’s network and ultimately obtain PII for 145 million American citizens, as well as the intellectual property of the U.S. company.

The indictment alleges the four individuals named therein reside in Beijing, China and are members of the 54th Research Institute. The 54th Research Institute is a component of the PLA. The indicted individuals gained unauthorized access, via a software vulnerability, to Equifax’s internal network, where they allegedly ran approximately 9,000 queries on Equifax’s systems and obtained the names, birth dates, and social security numbers for approximately half of all adult American citizens. The defendants also took deliberate steps to evade detection in the system, including routing traffic through approximately 34 servers located in nearly 20 countries to obfuscate their true location, using encrypted channels in order to blend in normal traffic within Equifax’s network, and wiping log files on a daily basis to try to eliminate records of their activity.

DOJ, the FBI, and our partners will continue to work tirelessly to combat this threat posed by the Chinese government against our nation. Although the PRC continues to modify the ways in which it conducts nefarious cyber activity, including through working with criminal hackers, the cases prosecuted by the DOJ in partnership with the FBI reflect an increasingly sophisticated ability to attribute criminal conduct to the individuals and nation states involved. We will be relentless in our pursuit of such malicious activity against our citizens and our industry.

There are other risks. Chinese companies are increasingly acquiring or launching social media applications not housed in mainland China for the global consumer market. These applications generate big data and collect PII, such as biometric information, contact lists, location data, log data, communication metadata, content (text and photographic), bank and credit card details, and financial transactions of U.S. persons. The associated user agreements and privacy policies typically obfuscate the companies’ data handling responsibilities or directly state any and all data can be transferred to other locations and associated entities to include the Chinese parent company. These data handling policies create a risk for U.S. big data and PII to be targeted and exploited by PRC actors. More broadly, consumers should be aware of the privacy implications of any application they install, especially applications from foreign countries with weak data protection laws.

In June 2017, the PRC introduced a new national cyber security law that requires foreign firms to store data locally and submit to data surveillance measures. Although implementing regulations are still being drafted, Beijing could likely use these authorities and policies to compel access to U.S. commercial and sensitive personal data, including sensitive information stored or transmitted through Chinese systems. U.S.-based subsidiaries of Chinese corporations and entities, or organizations in the U.S. partnering on cooperative research and development efforts, are among the entities affected by this law. The law has raised fears by those concerned with Beijing’s control of sensitive company information and increased opportunity to steal intellectual property.

Threats Exposing Vulnerabilities on Critical Infrastructure Networks and the Public

Virtually all companies collect and maintain sensitive data either of their own employees or customer information. The overall trend of digitizing data for ease of use or access makes many different industries vulnerable to data breaches. For instance, over recent years the health care industry has moved to centralizing patient data and using Internet-connected devices,which has increased the sector’s potential attack surface. Cyber actors benefit from this target-rich environment as the passage of patient data between health care departments and networks is critical to their care, but often levels of cybersecurity vary. Ransomware, denial of service attacks, and data breaches can all impede the ability to provide basic patient care and privacy for protected health information (PHI). Electronic medical records typically contain PII, which, combined with medical record information, is known as PHI.

It is also highly likely cyber actors target the IT sector to access their customers’ data and networks. IT sector entities manage and store valuable customer data and have unique, privileged access to client networks. These vital services create an environment where IT sector networks are compromised as a means for malicious cyber actors to reach a final target for fraud, hacktivism, and counterintelligence purposes.

Entertainment and media companies use Internet-enabled systems for marketing, merchandising, ticketing, and reservations. As a result, owners and operators manage and protect databases of customer and employee data, including personal, financial, and credit card information. Since at least 2015, nation-state and criminal cyber actors have conducted computer network exploitation against the subsector likely to gain unauthorized access to non-public information, although the extent of the access in each case remains unclear.

Efforts Used to Combat, Prevent, and Investigate Hacking or the Misuse of this Data

In order to combat cyber threats, the FBI has taken a whole-of-society approach. We actively engage with our private sector partners through the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), which is a non-profit partnership between private industry, government and academia all working together to identify and disrupt cyber-crime. We recently hosted a ransomware-focused summit, with incident response companies, representatives from the legal and insurance industries as well as other government entities, where we discussed collaborative efforts to address the threats.

The FBI also partners with the National Defense Cyber Alliance (NDCA), which is a non-profit organization bringing together the U.S. Intelligence Community and cleared defense contractor community to improve the security of their networks. Similar to how the NCFTA supports the financial/retail sector against criminal threats, the NDCA is designed to support the defense industrial base against national security threats.

Through undercover operations and confidential human sources, we are targeting and shutting down dark-net and Clearnet criminal forums where identities are sold and where cyber criminals gather to plan their next attack. We are actively engaging with our international partners through our Cyber Assistant Legal Attaché program, through our annual FBI-sponsored International Task Force, and through our participation in the FBI-led International Cyber Crime Operations Summit, as well as the Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group Cyber Crime Working Group.

The FBI understands the importance of stressing cybersecurity with individuals, not just with organizations. To do so, we hold a series of events aimed at educating and speaking with individuals about these issues. The FBI regularly takes part in public awareness campaigns,where we coordinate with other agencies on initiatives for engagement with the private sector to prevent threats to critical infrastructure, educate entities on serious cyber threats, and ultimately close intelligence gaps. Additionally, we disseminate Private Industry Notifications, FBI Liaison Alert System reports, and public service announcements to share cyber threat information with the private sector and the general public.

Conclusion

The FBI is engaged in myriad efforts to combat cyber threats, from improving threat identification and information sharing inside and outside of the government, to developing and retaining new talent, to examining the way we operate to disrupt and defeat these threats. FBI agents, analysts, and computer scientists are using technical capabilities and traditional investigative techniques—such as sources, court-authorized electronic surveillance, physical surveillance, and forensics—to counter these threats.

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Iris Biometric Added to NGI

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

“We are contacting our partners across the country and encouraging them to initiate this program,” said Special Agent Scott Rago, who heads the Biometric Services Section in the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS). “Having the ability where they don’t have to have contact with the individual—it just takes a second or two to look into the device and have your eyes captured and you get a response within a minute—it’s a very, very positive system.”

To date, the iris image repository contains 1.38 million enrollments submitted from federal, state, and local databases after they were collected during criminal bookings, incarcerations, or other legal proceedings. The iris images won’t replace fingerprints, which the FBI has collected and analyzed for nearly a century; they are a secondary biometric, or supplement, to the traditional collection of 10-finger prints and palm prints.

The Bureau’s fingerprint database—Next Generation Identification—contains more than 70 million prints of criminal subjects and more than 30 million civil fingerprints from background checks.

Rago said he hopes to see the iris image database grow to where it can make an impact on solving cases.

During the pilot period, which began in September 2013, several correctional systems incorporated iris collection into their processes, which enabled staff to get positive identifications—without physical contact—on inmates as they transferred in and out of facilities. The seven-year pilot enabled the FBI to build the criminal iris repository as well as assess privacy policies, best practices, and other requirements.

In the new system, so-called probe images of a subject’s left and right irises are captured at close range in a controlled setting. The images can then be searched against all the irises in the FBI’s repository. The process takes about a minute. A match will return the subject’s biographic data along with their criminal record, select National Crime Information Center record data, and, in some cases, a mug shot.

The Iris Service is the latest addition to the Bureau’s NGI System, which is the world’s largest and most efficient electronic repository of biometric and criminal information. In addition to repositories for irises and fingerprints, NGI includes 30 million criminal mugshots that law enforcement partners can search against.

Rago said he expects the NGI Iris Service to appeal to police and correctional workers because it’s fast, easy to use, and hands-off.

“In the future, once the repository has grown to a good sample size, you can imagine a police officer on a traffic stop using the mobile iris camera capability,” Rago said. “If someone’s being difficult, they don’t even have to put their hands on them. It’s, ‘Look at me,’ and capture the iris. They can run the information and get a response.”

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Five Things to Know About NIBRS

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

3. Crime statistics experts will use statistical modeling to fill in gaps. In the current SRS system, FBI and Department of Justice statisticians use advanced methodologies to estimate national crime statistics when a particular state or locality doesn’t provide data, or the data does not meet the criteria to be published. The same will occur with NIBRS. When estimates are used, they will be disclosed.

While communities that have not transitioned may be missing data for a year or two, estimates will still allow people to understand crime patterns and national trends. Those communities will have more comprehensive data after they make the switch to NIBRS.

4. Researchers and the public will still have access to long-term trends. Even with the transition to NIBRS, the public will still be able to see long-term crime trends. That’s because the FBI will convert the NIBRS data back into the SRS format, specifically for long-term trend analysis. This will offer researchers and the public an “apples to apples” comparison.

5. The FBI is working to help law enforcement transition to NIBRS. For more than five years, the FBI has worked with law enforcement agencies across the country to provide technical expertise, data integration support, and free training to move to NIBRS. Federal grants are also available to help them with the cost of upgrades.

The transition to NIBRS is a shift for police departments, both culturally and technologically, but the higher quality data will be worth the effort in the long term.

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Sextortion

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Presley’s mother said her daughter called at her first opportunity to break the phone connection with the predator. Testani wanted to take over one of her social media accounts so he could use it to contact her friends, giving him the ability to deceive and exploit another group of young girls. But as he took over her existing account, he needed her to create a new one for herself so they would still be connected online.

As she was carrying out that demand, Presley had a chance to call for help. “He told her she had two minutes to get it done,” her mother said. “When they broke that connection, she felt she could call me.”

Presley’s mother and stepfather raced home. And although they were confused about what was happening, they couldn’t mistake the terror in Presley’s voice. Her stepfather reached her first and immediately called the police when he saw what was happening on her phone.

Presley’s bravery in reporting helped investigators find the man who terrorized her. Testani pleaded guilty to child sexual exploitation in February and was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on August 6, 2020.

Special Agent Kevin Kaufman, who investigated the case for the FBI in Tampa with local law enforcement, said that they identified several other victims across the country—some as young as 10 years old.

The investigation showed that Testani obtained the login information for other victims’ social media accounts, which allowed him to message hundreds of other young people.

The length of Testani’s sentence reflects the number of children he hurt, the extreme nature of his crimes, and the devastating effects this type of sexual violence has on its victims. Presley’s mother said her daughter is still dealing with depression and anxiety, has trouble concentrating in school, and experiences panic attacks.

The fact that Presley never met Testani in person and never even saw his face only amplified her fear. This man who hurt her could be anyone, anywhere. “That’s why she went from a social butterfly to absolutely terrified to leave the house,” her mother said.