The Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General, Michael E. Horowitz, announced last week the release of a report examining how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) protects its employees, investigations, and operations from being identified via Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance (UTS). UTS is the widespread collection and analysis of data for the purpose of connecting people to things, events, or locations.
The DOJ Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found that the FBI took several steps towards improving its defense against UTS; however, we found areas in which those efforts need to be enhanced.
The OIG’s findings included the following:
- Enterprise Risk and Internal UTS Threat Assessment. In response to a December 2022 OIG Management Advisory Memorandum (MAM), which is included in today’s report as Appendix 5, then-Director Wray identified UTS as a “Tier 1 Enterprise Risk” and instructed the Office of Integrity and Compliance to lead an enterprise-wide review of the risks posed by UTS. This effort was a step in the right direction; however, we found that the threat assessment did not incorporate threats identified by a previous internal threat assessment.
- UTS Strategic Plan. During our audit, the FBI began developing a strategic plan to combat the UTS threat. We found that the initial outline of the strategy did not include a plan for assigning responsibility to officials with the authority to execute the strategy or how to leverage existing efforts to benefit the entire enterprise.
- Training. We found little enterprise-wide awareness of the UTS threat, and in response to our 2022 MAM, the FBI developed and provided mandatory UTS-awareness training to all FBI employees. We also found that employees in specific job roles needed more advanced training beyond the basic awareness. The FBI offers advanced training on a voluntary basis but lacks the resources to provide those trainings to all employees that need them.
The DOJ OIG made four recommendations to improve the FBI’s management of the UTS threat. The FBI agreed with all four recommendations.
Read the full report from the OIG here.
