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Comment by oneplane | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how that is something the FBI should be doing. I always thought the US had it's somewhat-secret-security agencies divided between foreign and local, spying and acting, and public and government tasks. (which is why they have so many of them?)

If this was a problem for the country, wouldn't it be DHS's job? And if there was an issue to be looked in to, it's FBI's job. And if there is something about spying to figure out if someone is doing something, there is the CIA and the NSA depending on where they need to look?

On top of that: wouldn't this be something that should simply be looked at internally at agencies and if there is an actual problem, resolve it for the country by issuing a law or directive or bill or whatever name they put to rules the US-based companies have to follow?

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In addition to being law enforcement, the FBI is also a domestic intelligence and counterintelligence agency. This would fall under their counterintelligence mission.

This is correct, FBI have aided in the securing of many private sector systems in the past. When a few critical flaws in the consumer credit network (eg visa,amex) were detected it was with the FBI's assistance and they oversaw the implementation of improvements.

Securing domestic computer networks and products from foreign attack surely fits within the FBI's jurisdiction. Obviously there's some overlap with the NSA in this mission (but not DHS -- they have very little in the way of computer crime experts), but this doesn't seem weird to me.

Basically: US law enforcement is telling US companies that Kaspersky products are likely compromised by Russian intelligence. Surely foreign law enforcement is issuing similar warnings about Symantec and McAfee products being compromised by the NSA.

NSA is DoD systems, DHS is other governmental systems and some critical private sector systems, FBI is counterintelligence investigations. They all overlap and help each other.

NSA is under Intelligence Community[0]. I think Defense Intelligence Agency is DOD's intelligence branch.[1] But my own wiki link is saying both NSA and DIA don't have parent agencies so idk..

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[0]http://www.dia.mil/

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...

Both the NSA and the DIA are under the DoD. Both are intelligence agencies and are part of the IC. All of the IC members fall under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA and DIA differ in their missions. The NSA is primarily focused on Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) whereas the DIA is focused on Human Intelligence (HUMINT), mostly pertaining to foreign militaries.

Those are euphemisms for spying and traitors.

more like "professional terminology"

This is all spelled out in EO 12333 : https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/execu...

DHS has a lot of computer crime experts– the United States Secret Service being the huge one.

President Obama issued a policy directive making the FBI the lead agency in cybersecurity response. This is a response.

> In view of the fact that significant cyber incidents will often involve at least the possibility of a nation-state actor or have some other national security nexus, the Department of Justice, acting through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, shall be the Federal lead agency for threat response activities.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/new-us-cyber-security-polic...

This isn’t really a comment about Kaspersky, because I don’t know if the implication that they are involved in Russian cyberespionage is true or not. However, in general, the FBI is very involved in tracking the different groups associated with nation state cyberespionage. One of the most common ways that a large company in the private sector finds out that it has been compromised is via FBI notification. Not even close to the same situation here, but it does illustrate that domestic network security falls within the scope of their operations.

Whether the federal government should be lobbying against a private companies’ products is a more complicated issue. I think, if it could be demonstrated that there is sufficient evidence to link them to unethical behavior, it might be appropriate.

With the oligarchy in Russia being what it is, it's not a stretch to think that any large company based in Russia is a proxy for the government. At the very least, the executives of that company could be pressured by the state security apparatus.

Pretty much anyone with money in Russia crosses the Putin government at their own peril. There are numerous cases of Russian billionaires in opposition to Putin losing their companies to supposedly trumped-up charges of tax evasion and subsequently dying in jail under suspicious circumstances.

My impression was that the charges are rarely trumped up; it's just that everyone remotely successful does it (so it's hard to be competitive without) and the law is enforced very selectively.

> Pretty much anyone with money in Russia crosses the Putin government at their own peril.

Having money is not a prerequisite, and in some cases even being in Russia is not a prerequisite.

This kind of FBI involvement predates DHS, and has been continued in part because of the way the programs evolved.

Much of the US critical infrastructure is owned and operated by private industry. For that reason, a collaboration between the FBI and private industry was formed in 1996, called Infragard [0]. Today, there are chapters in each of various regions of the US, each with an FBI coordinator who facilitates the communication between feds and local industry.

[0] http://www.infragardmembers.org/critical-infrastructures.htm...

Thank you for the intel. Did not know about Infragard until now. Brushing up on my history, I am at about 1914 in the chronology :)

My understanding is that the FBI handles intelligence within the country, while the CIA handles foreign intelligence.

The NSA's role being what, then?

There are many agencies responsible for foreign intelligence collection in the US. The NSA does SIGINT, CIA is more operational and HUMINT, and there's also military intelligence and special purpose agencies like the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency.

I believe, officially, their role is foreign signals intelligence.

The NSA is under the defense department, they handle national security level information. As marco said, SIGINT and ELINT for example.

It's worth noting that the NSA is DoD while the CIA is State Dept.

They do have somewhat orthogonal missions (HUMINT vs SIGINT) as others have commented, but never underestimate each piece of the government wanting their own agents.

The CIA is an independent agency, not part of State or Defense or any other executive department.

Listening to everything

The NSA is our spy organization.

Responsibilities of various pieces of the federal government are usually well-delineated but without clean taxonomic hierarchy. The hierarchy only gets cleaned up years or decades after things get spun up and it takes a massive reorganization effort. Single entities with two (or more) responsibilities often aren't worth the effort needed to split up, and thus never fall anywhere cleanly. Even to this day the department that investigates counterfeit currency is also responsible for bodyguarding the president.

at this point, they should combine all agencies... and call it something like secret police

How about 'Homeland Security'?

That'd be fine

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