[ISN] Whistleblower Says FBI E-Mail Flap Overblown

[InfoSec News]

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/X6PjYfzs2xLwfq/Whistleblower-Says-FBI-E-Mail-Flap-Overblown.xhtml

By John P. Mello Jr.
www.TechNewsWorld.com 
Part of the ECT News Network 
03/23/06 

"Most people who see something happening and think it's imperative to
get the information to the FBI would not e-mail it," Coleen Rowley,
former principal legal advisor with the bureau contended. "They would
probably pick up the phone and call. "If you're working on any matter
involving terrorism or counter intelligence, you can't be e-mailing
any of that outside the FBI anyway," she added.

Concern that a dearth of external e-mail accounts at the FBI will
effect the agency's ability to fight crime and terrorism is
"overblown," according to Coleen Rowley.

Rowley is a former principal legal advisor with the bureau known for
blowing the whistle on oversights it made prior to the World Trade
Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Trying to tie this in with terrorism is a little overblown because
you can't communicate that kind of information over a non-secured
system that goes outside the FBI anyway," Rowley, who is now running
for a Congressional seat in Minnesota, told TechNewsWorld.
 
Alarms over the FBI's external e-mail situation were raised this week
in the New York media when the head of the bureau's office in the Big
Apple, Mark Mershon, reportedly told members of the Daily News
editorial board:

"As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right
now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts
dot-gov accounts.

"We just don't have the money, and that is an endless stream of
complaints that come from the field."


New Sentinel

Ironically, Mershon's remarks were made just seven days after it was
reported that the FBI plans to spend US$500 million to upgrade
technology at the bureau.

The upgrade is part of the bureau's efforts to resurrect its Virtual
Case File (VCF) system. After spending $170 million on that system,
the agency had to scrap it last year because it was obsolete and
riddled with problems.

The first contract for the new system, dubbed Sentinel, is expected to
be awarded in April.


National Shortage

Although everyone in the bureau has access to internal e-mail and some
have access to a law-enforcement intranet called LEO (Law Enforcement
Online), there appears to be a shortage of external accounts
nationwide.

"Currently, over half of all FBI employees have a non-classified
e-mail account," Cathy Milhoan, a spokesperson in the bureau's
Washington, D.C. headquarters, told TechNewsWorld.

Jim Margolin, a spokesperson in the FBI's New York City office, told
the TechNewsWorld that 80 percent of the 2000 employees in that office
have external e-mail accounts.

Milhoan noted, however, that by the end of the year, external accounts
will be available to all 30,000 FBI employees nationwide.

Doesn't Impair Performance She attributed the current shortage of
external e-mail accounts to the termination a year ago of a contract
with AT&T (NYSE: T) . "Their servers were compromised so we
discontinued the old fbi-dot-gov account," she explained.

She said that the new external e-mail system runs on FBI servers and
its accounts have the designation ic-dot-fbi-dot-gov.

Asked if the unavailability of an external e-mail account impairs an
agent's ability to perform their duties in any way, Milhoan declared,
"Absolutely not."


Drop A Dime

Rowley added, "When you're working in the FBI, most of your
communication is internal.

"Most people who see something happening and think it's imperative to
get the information to the FBI would not e-mail it," she contended.  
"They would probably pick up the phone and call.

"If you're working on any matter involving terrorism or counter
intelligence, you can't be e-mailing any of that outside the FBI
anyway," she observed.

Shortfalls Not New Rowley maintained that the FBI's New York office
has always been chronically plagued with resource shortfalls.

"The New York office, because it has the largest number of agents and
personnel in the FBI, was always disadvantaged in terms of resources,"  
she said.

Today, the shortfall is in e-mail accounts, when she served in the New
York office in the 1980s, it was automobiles.

"We were driving real clunkers back in the '80s," she recalled. "Some
of the cars we were driving were demolition derby models."