Our speaker today was Eugene Kowel who joined the FBI in 2005. At that time, he was assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the New York Field Office. In the fall of 2020, he was named as the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Omaha Field Office.
Mr. Kowel has worked mostly in Terrorism Operations. He has served two deployments to Iraq (2208) and Afghanistan (2009) to support the FBI’s counterterrorism mission. He has worked in Los Angeles Field Office in to investigating violent gangs, transnational organized crime, violent crime, and crimes against children.
What does the FBI do – they protect the American people and the U.S. Constitution. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) enforces federal law, and investigates a variety of criminal activity including terrorism, cybercrime, white collar crimes, public corruption, civil rights violations, and other major crimes.
There are two kinds of terrorism. One of them is international terrorism which includes violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored). The second one is domestic terrorism which includes criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
Mr. Kowel told us that cyber terrorism is one that is something we all need to watch out for. China is probably one of the most known country’s that uses cyber terrorism to collect information because they would like to become a superpower. What is included in cyber terrorism?
Malicious cyber activity threatens the public’s safety and our national and economic security. The FBI’s cyber strategy is to impose risk and consequences on cyber adversaries. Our goal is to change the behavior of criminals and nation-states who believe they can compromise U.S. networks, steal financial and intellectual property, and put critical infrastructure at risk without facing risk themselves. To do this, we use our unique mix of authorities, capabilities, and partnerships to impose consequences against our cyber adversaries. One of things Mr. Kowel mentioned was agricultural information that China would like to get because we in the U.S. do a better job in working our land, growing our crops, have plenty of food available for our people.
The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber-attacks and intrusions. We collect and share intelligence and engage with victims while working to unmask those committing malicious cyber activities, wherever they are.
This becomes a concern locally and globally when our adversaries look to exploit gaps in our intelligence and information security networks. The FBI is committed to working with our federal counterparts, our foreign partners, and the private sector to close those gaps. These partnerships allow us to defend networks, attribute malicious activity, sanction bad behavior, and take the fight to our adversaries overseas. The FBI fosters this team approach through unique hubs where government, industry, and academia form long-term trusted relationships to combine efforts against cyber threats.
Within government, that hub is the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF). The FBI leads this task force of more than 30 co-located agencies from the Intelligence Community and law enforcement. The NCIJTF is organized around mission centers based on key cyber threat areas and led by senior executives from partner agencies. Through these mission centers, operations and intelligence are integrated for maximum impact against U.S. adversaries. Only together can we achieve safety, security, and confidence in a digitally connected world.
The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program
The FBI is the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities in the U.S. Because much of today’s spying is accomplished by data theft from computer networks, espionage is quickly becoming cyber-based. The goals of the FBI’s counterintelligence work are to:
- Protect the secrets of the U.S. Intelligence Community
- Protect the nation’s critical assets, like our advanced technologies and sensitive information in the defense, intelligence, economic, financial, public health, and science and technology sectors
- Counter the activities of foreign spies
- Keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands
Some of the other types of activities that the FBI can contribute their time to is:
Economic Espionage -costs the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year and puts our national security at risk. These foreign competitors deliberately target economic intelligence in advanced technologies and successful U.S. industries.
Historically, economic espionage has targeted defense-related and high-tech industries. But recent FBI cases have shown that no industry, large or small, is immune to the threat. Any company with a proprietary product, process, or idea can be a target. Any unprotected trade secret can be illegally stolen.
Outreach - In addition to its investigative work, the FBI works to raise public awareness and inform industry of the threats they face, through outreach activities. These include:
Civil Rights - The FBI, the lead agency for enforcing civil rights law, aggressively investigates hate crime, color of law abuses by public officials, human trafficking and involuntary servitude, and freedom of access to clinic entrances violations.
Public Corruption - Public corruption is the FBI’s top criminal investigative priority, that includes border corruption, election crimes, international corruption and prison corruption.
Weapons of Mass Destruction - The Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate investigates and works to prevent incidents involving nuclear, radiological, biological, or chemical weapons.
Organized Crime - The FBI is dedicated to eliminating transnational organized crime groups that pose the greatest threat to the national and economic security of the United States.
Violent Crime - The FBI, with its law enforcement partners, plays a key role in combating violent crime involving gangs, crimes…
White-Collar Crime - These crimes are not violent, but they are not victimless. White-collar crimes can destroy a company, wipe out a person's life savings, cost investors billions of dollars, and erode the public's trust in institutions.
Sex-Trafficking – Mr. Kowel said they do work with other agencies in sex-trafficking, especially when it involves crossing state lines.