The Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted Tuesday that it is technologically behind and its investigations into encrypted smartphones are hindered by that weakness.
“These types of solutions, they require a lot of highly skilled, specialized resources that we may not have immediately available to us,” Amy Hess, executive assistant director for science and technology at the FBI, told lawmakers at a House of Representatives hearing. When asked if it would be possible for the agency to develop those skills, she said, “No, ma’am, I don’t see that as possible.” To address this, the FBI requested an additional $38 million to fight encryption in its fiscal year 2017 budget, pushing that budget to nearly $70 million.
The hearing — about whether technology companies should give law enforcement special access to encrypted communications — comes about a month after the FBI dropped a public legal battle against Apple requesting the company write new software so investigators could bypass several iPhone security features. Apple and FBI officials sat on separate panels in Tuesday’s hearing, as they did on the same topic last month.
Read: What you need to know about the latest battle over smartphone security
The FBI has long struggled to convince tech whizzes to take jobs at the bureau. Private companies offer higher salaries, the background-check process for a government job is onerous and, on top of all that, the agency won’t hire people who have used marijuana in the last three years or any other illegal drug in the last 10 years, MarketWatch reported in July.
The FBI has seen several cyber officials leave. Consulting firm Berkeley Research Group scooped up Christopher Tarbell, Matthew Edman, Thomas Kiernan and Ilhwan Yum from the FBI earlier this year. The group had worked on prominent cases such as the takedown of Silk Road, an underground drug market, and investigated leaders of prominent hackers who were eventually prosecuted. Leo Taddeo, formerly the head of the agency’s cyber and special operations division in New York, left last summer and now works as chief security officer at security software company Cryptzone. Joseph Demarest Jr., who worked at the FBI in several cyber-focused roles, left in the fall for Ernst & Young.
The FBI did not immediately return a request for comment about its recruitment efforts. The White House said earlier this year that it plans to help cybersecurity experts who join the federal government pay off their student loans to encourage them to join the government.
“Private industry provides a lot of opportunity,” Thomas Galati, intelligence bureau chief for the New York Police Department, said at the hearing. “So I think the best people out there are working for private companies, and not for the government.”