U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Mel Orr

Source: U.S. Navy

This is the first time in the short history of the International Criminal Court that a State is requesting jurisdiction to conduct a national investigation against the same individual and for the same incidents under investigation by the International Criminal Court.

Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo

New York

ICC Considering Request By Libya To Try Qadhafi’s Son In National Court

New York, May 16 2012 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is currently considering a request by the Libyan authorities to try the son of former leader Muammar al-Qadhafi in their national courts, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Security Council today.

Earlier this month, the Libyan authorities submitted an admissibility challenge to the ICC in the case of Saif Al-Islam Qadhafi, who has been indicted by the Court, along with country’s former intelligence chief, Abdullah Al Sanousi, for their roles in attacks against protesters and rebels during the pro-democracy uprising last year.

“This is the first time in the short history of the International Criminal Court that a State is requesting jurisdiction to conduct a national investigation against the same individual and for the same incidents under investigation by the International Criminal Court,” Mr. Moreno-Ocampo said in his briefing to the 15-member Council.

“The challenge goes to the heart of the system of justice established in 1998 by the Rome Statute: national States have the primary obligation to conduct proceedings and the International Criminal Court’s intervention will be complementary,” he noted.

The challenge is currently before the Pre-Trial Chamber at the Court, which is based in The Hague, and the Prosecution will present its observations on 4 June.

Meanwhile, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo noted that Libyan authorities have said that Mr. Qadhafi has been kept in adequate conditions of detention, provided with sufficient and good quality food, given access to ICC lawyers and the option of retaining a domestic lawyer of his choosing. He has also been provided with proper medical and dental care, and not been subject to physical abuse.

The Prosecutor also reported that Mr. Al Sanousi was arrested in March by Mauritanian authorities and is the subject of extradition requests from France and Libya, as well a request for surrender from the ICC. “Mauritania shall decide,” he stated.

In addition, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo’s office continues to collect evidence in relation to a second case in Libya on gender crimes committed against both men and women.

“My Office is mindful of the sensitivity surrounding rape in Libya, and has adopted a strategy to limit exposure of victims by focusing on obtaining evidence from doctors and soldiers,” he said.

The ICC is an independent, permanent court that investigates and prosecutes persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes if national authorities with jurisdiction are unwilling or unable to do so genuinely.

The Office of the Prosecutor is currently carrying out investigations in seven situations: the Democratic Republic of Congo, northern Uganda, the Darfur region of Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya and Côte d’Ivoire.

Source: United Nations

The right ‘to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’ is the embodiment of the rights-based case for Internet Freedom, articulated some two decades before the concepts that, reduced to practice, became the Internet.

Philip L. Verveer

Washington

Remarks
Philip L. Verveer
Coordinator for International Communications & Information Policy
Winnik Telecom and Internet Forum
Hogan Lovells, Washington, DC

Two Cases For Internet Freedom

May 12, 2012

I am very grateful to Hogan Lovells and to my friends in its communications practice for the invitation to deliver these remarks.

I first met Joel Winnik nearly 35 years ago when we both worked at the Federal Communications Commission. Joel’s many outstanding qualities are well known to his colleagues in the communications bar. But beyond those qualities, there is one thing about him that has always marked him apart for me. Joel was the first lawyer I ever met who specialized in international communications law.

In this, he was prescient. When he began practicing international communications law, the sector almost universally consisted of state-owned monopolies. There were perhaps one billion telephone connections in world. And here “telephone” is a material qualification, because apart from telex services, voice connections were about the only thing available for international communications. Some international calls went by undersea cables, some by satellite, and some by high frequency radio.

The international regulatory concerns of the day involved such things as AT&T’s preferred use of undersea cables in which it had an ownership interest rather than communications satellites in which it did not; the consequences of the Congressional decision to appoint the Communications Satellite Corporation as the chosen instrument for our participation in International satellite communications; and disputes between Western Union and the International Record Carriers, who were the international suppliers of what we now would now call ultra slow speed data service.

Although Joel died too young, he lived long enough—and he contributed to—a great transformation in international telecommunications. Today there are almost no true monopolies in telecommunications—thanks to changes in public policy around the world and to wireless technology. There are approximately eight billion connections—an astounding increase that has contributed immeasurably to the well being of the world’s population. New institutions of great significance—ICANN, IETF, the Internet Society, and the World Wide Web Consortium, among others—have come into existence. And, most remarkably, the increase in the amount of information accessible almost instantaneously to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world ranges well beyond anything anyone could have imagined when Joel began practicing international communications law.

Joel’s work as a government and private attorney contributed to all of these developments. It represents a very tangible accomplishment in which Joel’s family, friends, and professional colleagues can and should take pride.

These developments continue to produce changes so fundamental in economics, politics, culture, and social relationships that we cannot hope to understand them in any comprehensive way. As Hegel said, “The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk,” and we are much closer to sunrise than to sunset.

But we do know some things. One of them—a very important thing about which we can feel very secure—is that the Internet is a great enabler of human expression, association, and assembly; and another thing—about which we can feel equally confident—is that the Internet is a great enabler of increases in material well being. One of the most important responsibilities confronting us today is assuring that these Internet-related opportunities are not impaired. This is a responsibility not just to ourselves and our descendants, but to people like Joel whose life’s work helped to provide the opportunities.

At the State Department, one aspect of this responsibility involves Internet Freedom. This is what I propose to elaborate upon.

A great deal has been and continues to be written and debated about Internet Freedom. Most of it, understandably, involves the extent of the Internet’s intrinsic utility in addressing and solving the very acute geopolitical problems of the day. One prominent example: the disputes involving the significance of the Internet in the Middle Eastern and North African political upheavals of the last eighteen months. Or, closer to home, of the never ending effort to find the optimal balance between the rights and responsibilities of individuals and the broader society in the use of the Internet. An example: the extraordinarily contentious disputes about proposed approaches to the protection of intellectual property in cyberspace. The recent books of Evgeny Morozov and Rebecca MacKinnon, among many others, provide examples.

I will prescind from these important immediate and practical concerns. Instead, I will very briefly offer my thoughts on the fundamental case for Internet freedom. Or, to say it differently, on the proposition that—explicitly or implicitly—we hold out when we address governments on the subject of Internet Freedom.

That case, of course, is not entirely divorced from considerations of utility. But, as we shall see, the assertions associated with principle are more fully developed than the assertions associated with material advantage.

The interest of Secretary Clinton and of the State Department as an institution in Internet Freedom falls squarely within the traditional functions of diplomacy. Diplomacy is conventionally said to involve three things—security, prosperity, and values. Internet Freedom addresses values and prosperity in a direct way and, we believe, through them, security.

This suggests that Internet Freedom relies on two bases—rights, specifically human rights, and economics. Both of these foster security.

Secretary Clinton has addressed Internet Freedom on several occasions. Her remarks have been wide-ranging, but they begin with the premise that freedom of expression, of association, and of assembly are fundamental human rights. They are innate. Each human being is entitled to them by virtue of being human, not by virtue of a grant from a governing authority. These rights are reflected—again, not granted, but acknowledged—in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, with eight abstentions but without dissent, in 1948. Article 19 holds that:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

The right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers” is the embodiment of the rights-based case for Internet Freedom, articulated some two decades before the concepts that, reduced to practice, became the Internet.

The Uniform Declaration is just that, a declaration. While it enjoys great moral authority, it is not binding, in the sense of international law. But the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, derived from the Universal Declaration, is. Adopted by the General Assembly in 1966, but also signed and ratified by most nations, with some notable exceptions, it is a binding, multilateral treaty. Article 19.2 mirrors the Universal Declaration in holding that:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

From a juridical perspective, then, there is a compelling case for Internet Freedom grounded in human rights. The problem, of course, is that it is not enough to persuade countries that have strong reasons to interfere with Internet Freedom.

This is why the economics case for Internet Freedom—the case appealing to more immediate self-interest—is very important. And, as I am about to describe, that case is not as well developed as the rights-based case.

The economic case for Internet Freedom is grounded on at least two propositions. The first is that interfering with the use of the Internet as a commercial channel inevitably will impose costs. We might think of this as the transactional case. This raises the question of whether it is possible to interfere with the Internet as a transmitter of political and related ideas while maintaining it at full, or at least acceptable, efficiency for economic purposes. The second proposition is more fundamental. It is based on the intuition that serious reductions in the free flow of ideas will harm a society’s ability to engage in innovation and thus ultimately will handicap economic growth. We might think of this as the cultural/psychological case in the sense the effects of censorship and repression on culture and behavior.

Secretary Clinton addressed both of these matters in her second Internet Freedom speech:

Walls that divide the internet, that block political content, or ban broad categories of expression, or allow certain forms of peaceful assembly but prohibit others, or intimidate people from expressing their ideas are far easier to erect than to maintain. Not just because people using human ingenuity find ways around them and through them but because there isn’t an economic internet and a social internet and a political internet: there’s just the internet. And maintaining barriers that attempt to change this reality entails a variety of costs—moral, political, and economic. Countries may be able to absorb these costs for a time, but we believe they are unsustainable in the long run. There are opportunity costs for trying to be open for business but closed for free expression—costs to a nation’s education system, its political stability, its social mobility, and its economic potential.

In both of these propositions, we are involved in an assessment of costs and benefits. If a government’s highest priority is regime preservation, it may be willing to pay any cost to secure it. History gives us too many examples of this, but we do not need to go beyond the present case of North Korea to appreciate both that the phenomenon exists and that the willingness to pay any cost is appalling in terms of its consequences.

Fortunately, we do not have many contemporaneous examples of countries that approach the regime stability-economic growth equation with the ferocity of North Korea, but we do have many that are making a bet that they can secure the Internet’s economic benefits without incurring unacceptable costs. They do this through censorship—in the modern way through technology and in the time-tested way through intimidation.

To dilate on the use of technology, the problems for governments attempting to rely on filtering and firewalls to keep out unwanted ideas involve both effectiveness and overbreadth. The more fully the screening of information, the more certain it is that the screens will catch too much. They will exclude information that would be valuable for commercial purposes, impair marketing and sales, and complicate supply chain cooperation. It is not hard to imagine why these kinds of problems are certain to arise. If a country is intent on keeping its citizens in ignorance about matters that might seem politically unsettling, it must constantly adjust what is acceptable and what is not. Given news cycles that have been compressed to minutes by the Internet, censorship requires literally constant judgments. And if the individuals responsible for censorship face greater sanctions for errors of omission than of commission, it is inevitable that economically valuable material will be excluded.

So this is the transactional case. What of the second proposition involving culture and psychology?

There is a strong and widely held belief that Internet Freedom produces economic benefits in fundamental ways, separate and apart from its transactional value. But at least as far as I am aware, this hasn’t yet been the object of extensive scholarship. What might confirm this intuition of deeper economic benefit?

This obviously is related to the far larger matter of the prerequisites for economic growth. As it happens, we have a reasonably clear sense of what they are. Sustained economic growth requires a stable level of security where citizens have protection from violence from both internal and external sources. So a state is necessary, but so are appropriate and effective institutions. The state must be what Professors Acemoglu and Robinson in their recent book Why Nations Fail call inclusive and non-extractive. Opportunities to amass wealth must be widely available rather than limited to a small, politically powerful segment of the population. And those with governing authority must not make excessive extractions of the society’s wealth. They must not be rent seekers, pursuing the accumulation of wealth for themselves, their families, and their retainers, a phenomenon that continues to be all too prevalent in our world.

The ideal, then, involves the creation of a legal and regulatory milieu that is conducive to investment. This prototypically consists of a stable, reliable rule of law that, among other things, assures that contractual commitments are honored. The ideal also involves an autonomous judiciary for purposes of arbitration of disputes and to oversee those matters that warrant the imposition of social controls.

We need these institutional arrangements for purposes of economic growth, but there remains the interesting possibility that Internet Freedom has a critical connection to innovation—a connection that involves respect for and encouragement of personal autonomy. At the risk of intruding on the prerogatives of the tenured, I would like to propose one approach to the question based on an historical analogy. This follows the suggestion of Thomas Spavins, a valued colleague who has been providing his expert advice on all things related to the Internet.

Economic historians have addressed the question of why over the last five centuries Western Europe has experienced a great increase in wealth. One of the most prominent academicians, Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University, has produced very important insights. Professor Mokyr identifies several relevant factors. One is especially intriguing for present purposes. It involves the freedom of individuals to pursue their ideas as they wished, free from the strictures of authority. To quote Professor Mokyr, it is:

the Enlightenment notion of freedom of expression. In our age, we think of technological change as natural and obvious; indeed, we consider its absence a source of concern. Not so in the past: inventors were seen as disrespectful, rebelling against the existing order, threatening the stability of the regime and the Church, and jeopardizing employment. In the eighteenth century, this notion slowly began to give way to tolerance, to the belief that those with odd notions should be allowed to subject them to a market test. … Words like “heretic” to describe innovators began to disappear.

This insight, it seems to me, provides an entirely plausible basis for the belief that Internet Freedom leads to innovation and economic growth. Or, stated differently, that the absence of Internet Freedom diminishes a society’s economic growth. In any event, scholars would perform a material service to all of us interested in information and communications technologies if they would take up the study of Internet Freedom, either in the manner of Professor Mokyr or otherwise.

There is one more thing to consider. The Enlightenment experience had another feature that is self-evidently relevant to the Age of the Internet and the freedom to spread of its benefits. To quote Professor Mokyr again:

To bring about the progress that they envisioned—to solve pragmatic problems of industry, agriculture, medicine, and navigation—European scientists realized that they needed to accumulate a solid body of knowledge and that this required, above all, reliable communications. They churned out encyclopedias, compendiums, dictionaries, and technical volumes—the search engines of their day—in which useful knowledge was organized, cataloged, classified, and made as available as possible. … The age of Enlightenment was also the age of the “Republic of Science,” a transnational, informal community in which European scientists relied on an epistolary network to read, critique, translate, and sometimes plagiarize one another’s ideas and work. Nationality mattered little, it seemed, compared with the shared goal of human progress.

“The shared goal of human progress” seems like an appropriate place to end my speculations.

There are, then, two pillars on which Internet Freedom rests. Internet Freedom is right and it is useful. In a better world, it would be sufficient that it is right. But until human nature and this world experience improvement, it matters that Internet Freedom is useful.

I don’t have any difficulty accepting Internet Freedom’s value in the generation of wealth. But for purposes of persuading the present and future leaders of Administrations that may be less sure of this, the attention of the academy to this matter would be entirely welcome.

Source: State Department

Caught between drug producing countries in the South and some of the major consumer countries in the North, proximity has encouraged criminality.

Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon

New York

Top UN Officials Underscore Need To Combat Organized Crime In Central America

New York, May 16 2012 

Senior United Nations officials today drew the world’s attention to threats posed by transnational organized crime and drug trafficking in Central America and called for concerted global efforts to combat the scourge, which they said is spreading to other continents.

“Countries in Central America face a tide of violence, born of transnational organized crime and drug trafficking,” the President of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, said at the opening of the Assembly’s thematic debate on <I>Security in Central America as a Regional and Global Challenge – How to Improve and Implement the Central American Security Strategy</I>.

“Human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and kidnapping have also attached themselves to the underbellies of Central American societies. Highly sophisticated criminal threats in the region are eroding economic development, corrupting legal and political processes, and undermining public confidence,” said Mr. Al-Nasser.

“In a word, these threats risk unravelling gains made in development in the region, and leading to social and political upheaval,” he added.

The overall objective behind the debate is to highlight the Central American Governments’ individual and collective fight against transitional organised crime, its focus in the framework of UN policies and actions, as well as the importance of cooperation with and support of the donor community. In June last year, the region’s Heads of State adopted a so-called Central American Regional Security Strategy.

In his opening remarks, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed out that countries in the region – especially in the northern triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras – face rising levels of violence fuelled by transnational organized crime and drug trafficking.

“Caught between drug producing countries in the South and some of the major consumer countries in the North, proximity has encouraged criminality,” said Mr. Ban.

He highlighted the fact that Central America has become the region with the highest homicide rates in the world – 39 murders per 100,000 citizens in Guatemala, 72 per 100,000 in El Salvador, and 86 per 100,000 in Honduras.

“In countries of the region, as many as one out of every fifty 20-year-old males will be murdered before they reach the age of 32. That is 400 times higher than in countries with low homicide rates,” said Mr. Ban. “This is more than a spate of killings, it is a crisis – bringing with it great fear and instability to societies. Beyond these appalling numbers, other crimes have emerged – kidnappings, migrant smuggling and human trafficking.”

He also noted that the narcotics problem was not confined to Central America, pointing out that the region is a “bridge” to North America, and that the Americas are, in general, a “staging post” to Europe, through trafficking routes in West and Central Africa.

“All of this underscores the need to go beyond a regional approach. Our world is interconnected.  Our challenges are linked. Our solutions must be, too,” said Mr. Ban. “That is why, last year, I established the [UN] Task Force on Transnational Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking. Our approach is rooted in the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

The Task Force was set up in March 2011 to integrate responses to transnational organized crime into the United Nations’ peacekeeping, peacebuilding, security and development activities, with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the UN Department of Political Affairs as co-chairs.

In his remarks, Mr. Al Nasser urged Member States and the UN to continue to work towards greater unity and political commitment to tackle the security challenges in Central America.

“Our duty is to help tear down the complex web of crime in Central America, and to achieve security – one of the keystones of democracy – for the region, and for the world,” he said.

Mr. Al-Nasser announced that he will, on 26 June, convene a thematic debate on <I>Drugs and Crime as a Threat to Development</I> on the occasion of the UN International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

Source: United Nations

As a result of the imprudent risk-taking of major financial companies and the perceived severe consequences to the financial system and the economy associated with their disorderly failure, the U.S. government (and many foreign governments) intervened to reduce the impact of, or prevent, the failure of these companies. Before the crisis, market participants had assumed that major financial companies likely would receive government assistance if they became troubled. The actions taken by governments in response to the crisis, although necessary, helped to solidify the market view that such financial firms were too big to fail.

Michael S. Gibson

Washington

Michael S. Gibson
Director, Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation

Systemically Important Financial Institutions And The Dodd-Frank Act

Before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives

May 16, 2012

Chairman Capito, Ranking Member Maloney, and other members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify on implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) as it relates to the designation, supervision, and regulation of systemically important nonbank financial companies.

Systemically Important Nonbank Financial Companies and the Problem of “Too Big to Fail”
The recent financial crisis showed that some financial companies, including nonbank financial companies not historically subject to consolidated prudential supervision, had grown so large, leveraged, and interconnected that their failure could pose a threat to overall financial stability. The sudden collapses or near-collapses of major financial companies, and in particular major nonbank financial companies, were among the most destabilizing events of the crisis. The crisis also demonstrated weaknesses in the existing framework for supervising, regulating, and otherwise constraining the risks of major financial companies, as well as deficiencies in the government’s toolkit for managing their failure.

As a result of the imprudent risk-taking of major financial companies and the perceived severe consequences to the financial system and the economy associated with their disorderly failure, the U.S. government (and many foreign governments) intervened to reduce the impact of, or prevent, the failure of these companies. Before the crisis, market participants had assumed that major financial companies likely would receive government assistance if they became troubled. The actions taken by governments in response to the crisis, although necessary, helped to solidify the market view that such financial firms were too big to fail.

The Dodd-Frank Act addresses key gaps in the framework for supervising and regulating systemically important financial institutions and the market perception that such firms are too big to fail. Specifically, the Dodd-Frank Act seeks to mitigate the threat to financial stability posed by systemically important nonbank financial companies that were historically outside the existing regulatory framework for bank holding companies. The Dodd-Frank Act takes a multi-pronged approach to do so, including: (i) the establishment of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (the Council), which has the authority to designate nonbank financial companies that could pose a threat to financial stability; (ii) a new framework for consolidated supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve of nonbank financial companies designated by the Council; and (iii) improved tools for the resolution of failed nonbank financial companies.

I will briefly discuss the Federal Reserve’s work to date in each of these key areas.

Designation of Nonbank Financial Companies by the Financial Stability Oversight Council
As you know, the Dodd-Frank Act created a council of regulators, the Financial Stability Oversight Council, to coordinate efforts to identify and mitigate threats to U.S. financial stability across a range of institutions and markets. Among the Council’s most important responsibilities are establishing a framework for designating nonbank financial companies whose failure could pose a threat to financial stability, and applying that framework to designate and reassess individual firms over time. Once designated, these firms would be subject to consolidated supervision by the Federal Reserve and would be required to satisfy enhanced prudential standards established by the Federal Reserve under title I of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Federal Reserve has been working closely with the other member agencies of the Council to put this designation framework in place. On April 3, the Council issued a final rule and interpretive guidance setting forth the criteria and process it will use to designate nonbank financial firms as systemically important. The Council’s rule provides detail on the framework that it intends to use to assess a particular firm’s potential to threaten U.S. financial stability. The analysis would take into account the firm’s size, interconnectedness, provision of critical products or services, leverage, and reliance on short-term funding, as well as its existing regulatory oversight.

The Council’s issuance of this rule is an important step forward in ensuring that systemically critical nonbank financial firms will be subject to strong consolidated supervision and regulation. The Council and its member agencies’ staffs currently are using these criteria to analyze the potential systemic importance of individual nonbank financial companies in different industries. As the Council gains experience with the designation process, we expect it will make adjustments to its rule and procedures as appropriate.

Regulation and Supervision of Systemically Important Nonbank Financial Companies
Of course, the identification and designation of systemically important nonbank financial companies is only an initial step. Just as important is the establishment of a strong, effective regulatory framework for constraining the systemic risk posed by such firms. In this regard, sections 165 and 166 of the Dodd-Frank Act require the Federal Reserve to establish enhanced prudential standards both for bank holding companies with total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more and for nonbank financial companies designated by the Council. These standards include enhanced risk-based capital and leverage requirements, liquidity requirements, single-counterparty credit limits, stress testing, risk-management requirements, an early remediation regime, and resolution-planning requirements. Sections 165 and 166 also require that these prudential standards become more stringent as the systemic footprint of the firm increases.

In December, the Federal Reserve issued a package of proposed rules to implement sections 165 and 166 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The Federal Reserve’s proposed rules would apply the same set of enhanced prudential standards to covered companies that are bank holding companies and covered companies that are nonbank financial companies designated by the Council. As we made clear in the proposal, however, the Federal Reserve may tailor the application of the enhanced standards to different companies on an individual basis or by category, taking into consideration each company’s capital structure, riskiness, complexity, financial activities, size, and any other risk-related factors that the Federal Reserve deems appropriate. Working out the exact details of how enhanced prudential standards will apply to nonbank financial companies will certainly require a thoughtful and iterative analysis of each designated company over time. Once the Council designates one or more nonbank financial companies, the Federal Reserve is committed to thoroughly assessing the business model, capital structure, and risk profile of each designated company and tailoring the application of the enhanced standards to each company on an individual basis or by category, as appropriate. The Federal Reserve will also give careful consideration to the appropriate transition period required for newly designated nonbank financial companies to comply with the enhanced prudential standards and other regulatory requirements.

The comment period for the Federal Reserve’s enhanced prudential standards proposal closed on April 30, 2012. Nearly 100 comments letters were received. The Federal Reserve is currently reviewing those comments carefully as we work to develop final rules to implement sections 165 and 166.

Living Wills and Orderly Resolution
Ending “too big to fail” also requires that a systemically important financial institution be allowed to fail if it cannot meet its obligations–and to fail without inflicting serious damage on the broader financial system. Thus, the Dodd-Frank Act empowers the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to reduce the impact on the system in the event of the failure of a systemically important nonbank financial company through two important new regulatory tools. First, section 165(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act requires each bank holding company with total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more and each nonbank financial company designated by the Council to prepare and provide to the FDIC and the Federal Reserve a resolution plan, or “living will,” for its rapid and orderly resolution under the U.S. bankruptcy code. Second, title II of the Dodd-Frank Act provides for an orderly resolution process to be administered by the FDIC. Importantly, both of these new tools extend to systemically important nonbank financial companies, in addition to bank holding companies with total consolidated assets of $50 billion or more.

Source: Federal Reserve Board

Foreign cyber spies have become increasingly adept at exploiting weaknesses in our computer networks. Once inside, they can exfiltrate important government and military information, as well as valuable commercial data—information that can compromise national security as well as improve the competitive advantage of state-owned companies.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III

New York

Robert S. Mueller, III
Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee

May 16, 2012

Good morning, Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee today and for your continued support of the men and women of the FBI.

As you know, the Bureau has undergone unprecedented transformation in recent years. Since the attacks of September 11th, we have refocused our efforts to address and prevent emerging terrorist threats. The terrorist threat is more diverse than it was 10 years ago, but today, we in the FBI are better prepared to meet that threat.

We still confront traditional espionage and work diligently to prevent foreign intelligence agents from gaining our nation’s political, military or economic secrets.

We also face increasingly complex threats to our nation’s cyber security. Nation-state actors, sophisticated organized crime groups, and hackers for hire are stealing intelligence and national security data, as well as trade secrets and valuable research from America’s companies, universities, and government agencies. These cyber threats are also a risk for our nation’s critical infrastructure.

Yet national security is not our only concern, as we remain committed to our criminal programs. In the economic arena, investment fraud, mortgage fraud, securities fraud and health care fraud have harmed the world’s financial system and victimized investors, homeowners, and taxpayers.

And although crime rates may be down nationwide, gang violence still plagues many neighborhoods, and our communities continue to confront violent crime, crimes against children, and threats from transnational organized crime.

As national security and criminal threats continue to evolve, so too must the FBI change to counter those threats. We must continue to use intelligence and investigative techniques to find and stop criminals and terrorists before they act. As we face greater challenges, we in the Bureau are relying on our law enforcement and private sector partners more than ever before.

The FBI remains firmly committed to carrying out our mission while protecting the civil liberties of the citizens we serve.

Counterterrorism

Counterterrorism remains our top priority.

In the past decade, al Qaeda has become decentralized, but the group remains committed to high-profile attacks against the West. We confirmed this with records seized from Osama bin Laden’s compound just over a year ago, as well as the recent conviction of an al Qaeda operative plotting to conduct coordinated suicide bombings in the New York City subway system.

Al Qaeda affiliates and adherents, especially al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), currently represent the top counterterrorism threat to the nation. These groups have attempted several attacks in and on the United States, including the failed Christmas Day airline bombing in 2009, and the attempted bombing of U.S.-bound cargo planes in October of 2010.

We also remain concerned about the threat from homegrown violent extremists. Over the last two years, we have seen increased activity among extremist individuals. These individuals have no typical profile; their experiences and motives are often distinct. But they are increasingly savvy and willing to act alone, which makes them difficult to find and to stop.

For example, in February 2012, the FBI arrested Amine El Khalifi, a 29-year-old Moroccan immigrant, for allegedly attempting to detonate a bomb in a suicide attack on the U.S. Capitol. According to court documents, Khalifi believed he was conducting the terrorist attack on behalf of al Qaeda, although he was not directly affiliated with any group.

Another example is the case of Rezwan Ferdaus, a 26-year-old U.S. citizen and graduate student residing in Ashland, Massachusetts. Last fall, Ferdaus allegedly planned to use unmanned, remote-controlled aircraft to attack locations in Washington, D.C., including the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Ferdaus was influenced by radical websites advocating violent extremism, among other things, and had expressed admiration for al Qaeda’s leaders, but was not directly affiliated with any group. He had allegedly become extremist on his own, making his activities much more difficult to detect. Ferdaus is currently awaiting trial in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Much like every other multi-national organization, terrorist groups are using the Internet to grow their business and to connect with like-minded individuals. Al Qaeda uses online chat rooms and web sites to recruit and radicalize followers to commit acts of terrorism. AQAP has produced a full-color, English language online magazine. Cases such as these illustrate why we in the Intelligence Community must continue to enhance our intelligence capabilities and to share information to ensure that critical information gets to the right people—before any harm is done. The FISA Amendments Act (FAA), allows the intelligence community to collect vital information about international terrorists and other important targets overseas while providing a robust protection for the civil liberties and privacy of Americans. I join the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence in urging Congress to reauthorize this authority before it expires at the end of this year.

The Bureau itself has established a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Office within the National Security Branch (NSB) to improve our effectiveness in empowering our state, local, and community partners to assist in this effort. The duties and goals of this office include developing a better understanding of, and countering the threat of, violent extremism in the United States, strengthening community partnerships and providing to state and local officials and to community leaders unclassified briefings regarding the threat of extremism, addressing CVE-related operational and mission-support needs, including investigations, analysis, and training, and coordinating Bureau interests with regard to CVE matters with those of other agencies to ensure U.S. government efforts are aligned.

Counterintelligence

We still confront traditional espionage—spies working under diplomatic cover, or even posing as ordinary citizens.

Today’s spies are also students, researchers, businesspeople, or operators of “front companies.” And they seek not only state secrets, but trade secrets, research and development, intellectual property, and insider information from the federal government, U.S. corporations, and American universities.

Consider the recent case of Stewart David Nozette, a scientist who once worked for the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, NASA, and the National Space Council. He was sentenced in March to 13 years in prison for attempted espionage, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and tax evasion after providing classified information to an undercover FBI agent whom he believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer.

In another case, Hanjuan Jin, a former software engineer at Motorola, Inc., was found guilty in February on charges of stealing the company’s trade secrets. She was stopped by U.S. Customs officials in February 2007 at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport with more than 1,000 electronic and paper proprietary documents from Motorola. She was attempting to travel on a one-way ticket to China. Authorities also recovered multiple classified Chinese military documents that described telecommunication projects for the Chinese military.

In another case, 36-year DuPont employee, Tze Chao, pled guilty in March to providing trade secrets concerning DuPont’s proprietary titanium dioxide manufacturing process to companies controlled by the Chinese government. He admitted providing information he understood to be secret to DuPont and not available to the public. He faces up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine plus restitution.

These cases illustrate the growing scope of the “insider threat”—when employees use their legitimate access to steal secrets for the benefit of another company or country.

Cyber

The counterintelligence threat is quickly becoming cyber-based. So much sensitive data is stored on computer networks, our adversaries often find it as effective, or even more effective, to steal vital strategic and economic information through cyber intrusions, rather than through more traditional human spies.

The cyber threat has evolved significantly over the past decade. Indeed, we anticipate that cyber security may become our highest priority in the future.

Foreign cyber spies have become increasingly adept at exploiting weaknesses in our computer networks. Once inside, they can exfiltrate important government and military information, as well as valuable commercial data—information that can compromise national security as well as improve the competitive advantage of state-owned companies.

Unlike state-sponsored intruders, hackers for profit do not seek information for political power; rather they seek information for sale to the highest bidder. Some of these once-isolated hackers have joined forces to create criminal syndicates. Organized crime in cyber space offers a higher profit with a lower probability of being identified and prosecuted.

Additionally, hackers and hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec are pioneering their own forms of digital anarchy.

The end result of these developments is that we are losing data, money, ideas, and innovation. And as citizens, we are increasingly vulnerable to losing our personal information.

We in the FBI have built up an expertise to address these threats, both here at home and abroad.

We have approximately 70 cyber squads across our 56 field offices, with more than 1,000 specially trained agents, analysts, and forensic specialists. The FBI also has 63 legal attaché offices that cover the globe. Together with our international counterparts, we are sharing information and coordinating investigations. We have special agents embedded with police departments in Romania, Estonia, Ukraine, and the Netherlands, working to identify emerging trends and key players.

Here at home, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force brings together 20 law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies to investigate current and predict future attacks. With our partners at DOD, DHS, CIA, and the NSA, we are targeting the cyber threats that face our nation. The task force operates through Threat Focus Cells—specialized groups of agents, officers, and analysts that are focused on particular threats, such as botnets.

Together with our intelligence community and law enforcement agency partners, we are making progress toward defeating the threat—through our use of human sources, technical surveillance, and computer science.

Last April, with our private sector and law enforcement partners, the FBI dismantled the Coreflood botnet. This botnet infected an estimated two million computers with malware that enabled hackers to seize control of the privately owned computers to steal personal and financial information.

With court approval, the FBI seized domain names and re-routed the botnet to FBI-controlled servers. The servers directed the zombie computers to stop the Coreflood software, preventing potential harm to hundreds of thousands of users.

In another case, last fall we worked with NASA’s Inspector General and our partners in Estonia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands to shut down a criminal network operated by an Estonian company by the name of Rove Digital.

The investigation, called Operation Ghost Click, targeted a ring of criminals who manipulated Internet “click” advertising. They redirected users from legitimate advertising sites to their own advertisements and generated more than $14 million in illegal fees. This “click” scheme impacted more than 100 countries and infected four million computers, half a million of which were here in the United States.

We seized and disabled rogue servers, froze the defendants’ bank accounts, and replaced the rogue servers with legitimate ones to minimize service disruptions. With our Estonian partners, we arrested and charged six Estonian nationals for their participation in the scheme.

Together with our partners at DHS and the National Cyber-Forensics Training Alliance, we are using intelligence to create an operational picture of the cyber threat to identify patterns and players, to link cases and criminals.

We must continue to share information with our partners in law enforcement, in the intelligence community, and in the private sector.

We also must segregate mission-centric data from routine information. We must incorporate layers of protection and layers of access to critical information. And when there is a compromise, we must limit the data that can be gleaned from it.

Attribution is critical to determining whether an attack on a U.S. company is perpetrated by a state actor, an organized criminal group, or a teenage hacker down the block. We can use the ability to attribute an attack to a specific attacker to help deter future attacks.

We cannot simply minimize vulnerabilities and deal with the consequences. Collectively, we can improve cyber security and lower costs with systems designed to catch threat actors, rather than simply to withstand them.

Financial Crimes

We have witnessed an increase in financial fraud in recent years, including mortgage fraud, health care fraud, and securities fraud.

Mortgage Fraud

The FBI and its partners continue to pinpoint the most egregious offenders of mortgage fraud. At the end of last year, the FBI had nearly 2,600 mortgage fraud investigations nationwide—and a majority, over 70 percent, of these cases included losses greater than $1 million.

With the collapse of the housing market, we have seen an increase in schemes aimed at distressed homeowners, such as loan modification scams and phony foreclosure rescues. So- called “rescue services” claim they can expose errors by lenders that might allow owners to keep their homes. In reality, they are just a clever way to lure nervous consumers into giving up sensitive personal information and paying thousands of dollars in fees for false hopes. Indeed, in some cases, these criminals convince homeowners to sign away the deeds to their homes.

Other criminals preyed on investors’ hopes of cashing in before the housing bubble burst. In March, 61-year-old Andrew Williams, Jr., of Hollywood, Florida, was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his role in a $78 million mortgage fraud scheme. Through the scheme, Williams promised to pay off homeowners’ mortgages in five to seven years following an initial investment of $55,000. Unfortunately for investors, this was no more than a Ponzi scheme. Those who paid the fee and joined the “Dream Homes Program” later found that there was no money left to fund their mortgage payments.

The FBI has made mortgage fraud a top priority, because we recognize its negative impact on homeowners, neighborhoods, and our nation’s economy.

Over the past four years, we have nearly tripled the number of special agents investigating mortgage fraud. Our agents and analysts are using intelligence, surveillance, computer analysis, and undercover operations to identify emerging trends and to find the key players behind large-scale mortgage fraud.

We also work closely with the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspectors, the IRS, the FDIC, SIGTARP, the U.S. Trustee Program, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Secret Service, as well as with state and local law enforcement offices.

Health Care Fraud

Health care spending currently makes up about 18 percent of our nation’s total economy and continues to rise. These large amounts of money present an attractive target for criminals—so much so that we lose tens of billions of dollars each year to health care fraud.

In February, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force—a partnership between the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services—broke up the largest alleged home health care fraud scheme ever committed.

Dr. Jacques Roy, the owner of Medistat Group Associates in the Dallas area, was arrested along with several others for allegedly billing nearly $375 million in fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid claims for home health care services. Between January 2006 and November 2011, Medistat had more purported patients than any other medical practice in the United States—including more than 11,000 patients from more than 500 home health agencies.

Since their inception in March 2007, Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations have charged more than 1,300 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for more than $4 billion. Recently, a nationwide takedown by Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in seven cities resulted in charges against 107 individuals, including doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving approximately $452 million in false billing.

Health care fraud is not a victimless crime. Every person who pays for health care benefits, every business that pays higher insurance costs to cover their employees, and every taxpayer who funds Medicare, is a victim.

As health care spending continues to rise, the FBI will use every tool we have to ensure our health care dollars are used to care for the sick—not to line the pockets of criminals.

Corporate and Securities Fraud

Another area where our investigations have increased substantially in recent years is in corporate and securities fraud. Since September 2008, we have seen a 49 percent increase in these cases to more than 2,600 today.

One of our largest insider trading cases centered on the Galleon Group, a $7 billion hedge fund based in New York. Using evidence obtained through court-approved wiretaps, attorneys and corporate insiders at several Fortune 500 companies were convicted of leaking proprietary information. The owner of the Galleon Group was convicted of multiple counts of securities fraud and sentenced in October to 11 years in prison—the longest sentence ever for insider trading. And in March 2012, Allen Stanford, former chairman of the board of Stanford International Bank, was convicted on wire, mail and other fraud charges for orchestrating a $7 billion investment fraud scheme.

As financial crimes such as these become more sophisticated, so too must the FBI. In addition to devoting more agents and analysts, we established a Forensic Accountant Program three years ago. Under this program we have hired nearly 250 forensic accountants who are trained to catch financial criminals.

Three years ago, we also established the FBI’s Financial Intelligence Center to strengthen our financial intelligence collection and analysis. The center coordinates with FBI field offices to complement their resources and to identify emerging economic threats.

In 2010, the FBI began embedding special agents at the SEC, which allows us to see tips about securities fraud as they come into the SEC’s complaint center. This, in turn, enables us to identify fraud trends more quickly and to push intelligence to our field offices so that they can begin criminal investigations where appropriate.

Gangs/Violent Crime

The most recent Uniform Crime Report (UCR) indicates violent crime continues to fall. However, for some cities and towns across the nation, violent crime—including gang activity—continues to pose a real problem.

Gangs have become more sophisticated. They have expanded their operations from street violence and drug trafficking to alien smuggling, identity theft, and mortgage fraud. Our Violent Crime, Violent Gang/Safe Streets, and Safe Trails Task Forces target major groups operating as criminal enterprises – high-level groups engaged in patterns of racketeering. This allows us to identify senior leadership and to develop enterprise-based prosecutions.

The FBI is also working to ensure crimes are being reported accurately. In collaboration with our state and local partners, the UCR program recently adopted a new, more inclusive definition of rape, which more accurately reflects current state laws defining the crime. This change will provide better data for our law enforcement partners in their efforts to respond to violent crimes. The Bureau is also beginning to look for ways to increase the accuracy and utility of the UCR more generally. These plans include collaborating within DOJ and the law enforcement community to increase the usage of the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) which is part of the UCR. Increased coverage of incident based reporting will lead to a more detailed and meaningful picture of crime in America.

Transnational Organized Crime

We also continue to confront organized crime. Crime syndicates run multi-national, multi-billion-dollar schemes—from human trafficking to health care fraud, and from computer intrusions to intellectual property theft.

These sophisticated enterprises operate both overseas and in the United States, and include Russian, Asian, Italian, Balkan, Middle Eastern, and African syndicates as well as Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

In the fall of 2010, an investigation by the FBI and its partners led to the indictment and arrest of more than 70 members and associates of an Armenian organized crime ring for their role in nearly $170 million in fraudulent Medicare billings. This case included more than 160 phony medical clinics. Some of the subjects opened bank accounts to receive Medicare funds and submitted applications to Medicare to become Medicare providers.

The annual cost of transnational organized crime to the U.S. economy is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars. The effects of these schemes filter down to everyday Americans, who pay more for gas, health care, mortgages, clothes and food, not to mention the economic and social harm that such criminal activity costs our nation as a whole.

But organized crime does more than just impact our economy. These groups have the potential to infiltrate our businesses, and provide support to hostile foreign powers.

No one department, agency, or country can fight organized crime on its own—we must work with our partners to end this predatory environment. We will continue to use all of our investigative tools, intelligence from our sources, and the strength of our partnerships to stop organized crime in the United States.

The FBI has squads dedicated to Eurasian Organized Crime investigations, including in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, Newark, and Chicago. Over the past decade, Asian criminal enterprises have evolved into transnational and decentralized networks that focus on low-risk and high-profit crimes. Chinese and Korean criminal networks across the United States obtain, sell, and use fraudulent U.S. identification documents to conduct a variety of financial crimes. The FBI is currently expanding its focus to include West African and Southeast Asian organized crime groups. The Bureau continues to share intelligence about criminal groups with our federal and international partners, and to combine resources and expertise to gain a full understanding of each group. In furtherance of these efforts, the FBI participates in the International Organized Crime Intelligence Operations Center. This center is responsible for coordinating the efforts of nine federal law enforcement agencies in combating non-drug transnational organized crime networks. The FBI is also enhancing its ability to address transnational criminal enterprises that operate along the Southwest Border and the Caribbean. We have developed hybrid squads to target these groups, which linked to U.S.-based gangs, cross-border drug trafficking, public corruption, money laundering, and violent crime.

Crimes Against Children

The FBI remains vigilant in its efforts to keep children safe and to find and stop child predators. Through our partnerships with state, local, tribal, and international law enforcement, we are able to investigate crimes that cross geographical and jurisdictional boundaries. We are also able to share intelligence, resources, and specialized skills to prevent child abductions.

Through our Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams, the Innocence Lost National Initiative, the Office of Victim Assistance, and numerous community outreach programs, the FBI and its partners are working to make the world a safer place for our children.

Last month we added accused child pornographer Eric Justin Toth to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive list. Toth, who also goes by the name David Bussone, is a former private-school teacher and camp counselor who taught here in Washington, D.C. He has been on the run since 2008, after an FBI investigation revealed pornographic images on a camera in his possession while at the D.C. private school. There is a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading directly to Toth’s arrest.

Since its creation in 1950, the Top Ten list has been invaluable to the FBI, helping us to capture some of the nation’s most dangerous criminals. Of the 495 fugitives named to the list, 465 have been apprehended or located. That level of success would not have been possible without the strong support of the public, which has helped capture 153 of the Top Ten fugitives.

Indian Country

The FBI also maintains primary federal law enforcement authority to investigate felony crimes on more than 200 Indian reservations nationwide. Last year, the FBI handled approximately 2,900 Indian Country investigations.

Sexual assault and child sexual assault are two of the FBI’s investigative priorities in Indian Country. Statistics indicate that American Indians and Alaska Natives suffer violent crime at greater rates than other Americans. Approximately 75 percent of all FBI Indian Country investigations concern homicide, crimes against children, or felony assaults. To address these threats, the FBI is deploying six new investigators to Indian Country as part of the Department of Justice’s broader effort to fight crime in tribal communities.

The FBI continues to work with tribes through the Tribal Law & Order Act to help tribal governments better address the unique public safety challenges and disproportionately high rates of violence and victimization in tribal communities. The Act encourages the hiring of additional law enforcement officers for Indian lands, enhances tribal authority to prosecute and punish criminals, and provides the Bureau of Indian Affairs and tribal police officers with greater access to law enforcement databases.

The gang threat on Indian reservations also poses a concern for the FBI. Currently, the FBI has 15 Safe Trails Task Forces focused on drugs, gangs, and violent crimes in Indian Country. In addition, the FBI continues its efforts to address the emerging threat from fraud and other white-collar crimes committed against tribal gaming facilities.

Technology

As criminal and terrorist threats become more diverse and dangerous, the role of technology becomes increasingly important to our efforts.

We are using technology to improve the way we collect, analyze, and share information. In 2011, we debuted new technology for the FBI’s Next Generation Identification System, which enables us to process fingerprint transactions much faster and with increased accuracy. We are also integrating isolated data sets throughout the Bureau, so that we can search multiple databases more efficiently, and, in turn, pass along relevant information to our partners.

Sentinel, the FBI’s new information and case management program, will replace the outdated Automated Case Support System. Sentinel is transforming the way the FBI does business by moving the Bureau from a primarily paper-based case management system to an electronic workflow-based management system of records. The system’s indexing ability will allow users to extract names, dates, vehicles, addresses, and other details, and to more efficiently share data with our law enforcement partners.

We expect that Sentinel will be deployed to the field by the end of this fiscal year, encompass all of its original design concept functionality and come in at budget or below.

Going Dark

As technology advances, both at the FBI and throughout the nation, we must ensure that our ability to obtain communications pursuant to court order is not eroded. The increasingly mobile, complex, and varied nature of communication has created a growing challenge to our ability to conduct court-ordered electronic surveillance of criminals and terrorists. Many communications providers are not required to build or maintain intercept capabilities in their ever-changing networks. As a result, they are too often not equipped to respond to information sought pursuant to a lawful court order.

Because of this gap between technology and the law, law enforcement is increasingly challenged in accessing the information it needs to protect public safety and the evidence it needs to bring criminals to justice. It is only by working together—within the law enforcement and intelligence communities, and with our private sector partners—that we will find a long-term solution to this growing problem. We must ensure that the laws by which we operate keep pace with new threats and new technology.

Civil Liberties/Rule of Law

Technology is one tool we use to stay one step ahead of those who would do us harm. Yet as we evolve and update our investigative techniques and use of technology to keep pace with today’s complex threat environment, we always act within the confines of the rule of law and the safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution. The world around us continues to change, but our values must never change. Every FBI employee takes an oath promising to uphold the rule of law and the United States Constitution. I emphasize that it is not enough to catch the criminal; we must do so while upholding civil rights. It is not enough to stop the terrorist; we must do so while maintaining civil liberties. It is not enough to prevent foreign nations from stealing our secrets; we must do so while upholding the rule of law.

Following the rule of law and upholding civil liberties and civil rights—these are not our burdens. These are what make all of us safer and stronger. In the end, we will be judged not only by our ability to keep Americans safe from crime and terrorism, but also by whether we safeguard the liberties for which we are fighting and maintain the trust of the American people.

Conclusion

Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley, I thank you for this opportunity to discuss the FBI’s priorities and state of the Bureau as it stands today. Mister Chairman, let me again acknowledge the leadership that you and this committee have provided to the FBI. The transformation the FBI has achieved over the past 10 years would not have been possible without the support of Congress and the American people. I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Source: United Nations