Justice Department seeks funds to fight cybercrime

The Justice Department has proposed spending $370 million to fight cybercrime, to increase its technological capabilities and to improve the nation's ability to defend itself against cyberattack, according to the fiscal 2002 budget plan the Bush administration unveiled Monday.

The department also is seeking a 16.6 percent increase in funding for its Antitrust Division. The new level would be $141 million, up from $121 million. The money would be used to hire 113 new employees, including 38 attorneys.

The Justice Department's proposed technology funding includes $100 million in technology grants for state and local law enforcement--an increase of $50 million increase over last year. It also includes $74 million for an FBI plan to support faster communications networks, $41 million to staff a new laboratory facility in Quantico, Va., $35 million to process a backlog of DNA samples from state-convicted offenders, $35 million to improve forensic capabilities of crime labs, and $35 million to update criminal-records systems and to promote nationwide integration of such systems.

"The technology improvements are a critical need connected to our core responsibility," Paul McNulty, a principal associate attorney general at the Justice Department, said at a press briefing Monday outlining the department's funding priorities.

Overall, the administration proposes a Justice Department budget of $24.65 billion, an increase of less than 1 percent over the fiscal 2001 budget of $24.26 billion. McNulty said the administration had reallocated and cut $2 billion from other programs to make room for its priorities.

Among the items funded last year that were eliminated this year were $201 million in reimbursement for telecommunications providers to comply with a 1994 digital-wiretapping law and $100 million for federal law enforcement officials to communicate via radio.

Department officials did not mention the increase for the Antitrust Division until questioned about the proposed 113-position staff increase. The 38-attorney increase, which is expected to go exclusively to the division addressing market structure, is more than double a 17-attorney increase in the Civil Rights Division McNulty trumpeted.

"The Antitrust Division is anticipating additional revenue" from a change in the level of filing fees called for by a change in the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act last year, a department official said. "They want additional bodies to do the work."

The budget request for the FBI's efforts to combat cybercrime includes $19 million to examine data-network communications technologies, $8.2 million to increase the agency's counter-encryption capabilities and $1.36 million to provide FBI field offices with wiretaps.

The Criminal Division would receive $1 million for national infrastructure protection and $693,000 for enhanced infrastructure improvements. The U.S. Attorneys' offices would receive $3 million for 18 new lawyers to prosecute hackers and other computer criminals.