Millions Off the Books: The FBI’s Hidden Surveillance Budget

When Deputy FBI Assistant Director James Burrell told a workshop roundtable about the Operational Technology Division’s (OTD) budget, he didn’t give precise figures. Instead, he said the Bureau has “hundreds of millions of dollars” to spend on law enforcement and national security.

 

The workshop was on “Encryption and Mechanisms for Authorized Government Access to Plaintext,” and was sponsored by The National Academies of Science, Technology, and Medicine. The program sought to determine whether it is possible to maintain digital security while giving the federal government access to secure devices.
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It has been reported that the OTD, which handles the FBI’s surveillance technology, had a budget of $600 to $800 million last year, but Bureau officials haven’t given an exact number.

 

Burrell explained that the budget had to be put “into context,” as funding is often split between law enforcement and national security activities. Given that the specifics of some technology is classified, “Sometimes we’re not able to use the technology we develop for one side equally on the other.”

 

He said the OTD focuses its energies on developing technology “specifically for use in investigations,” and that the division is one of the Bureau’s main technical fields, along with its core IT capacity.
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The FBI has gone to great lengths to keep its surveillance technology secret, even to the point of throwing out criminal cases so they won’t have to reveal their tactics.

 

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