FBI Chief Comey Says Bureau Needs Cybercrime Fighters

President Donald Laackman, Sen. Patrick Leahy and FBI Director James Comey at the LCDI

By WILSON RING, Associated Press

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) - The head of the FBI used a Friday visit to Vermont to urge college students studying ways to fight cybercrime and conduct digital investigations to take their talents and training to the FBI.

FBI Director James Comey toured Champlain College's Leahy Center for Digital Investigation, and afterward said every type of threat the FBI now confronts has an Internet component.

"It's where all of America is, and so those who would do us harm - hurt our kids, hurt old folks, hurt infrastructure, steal our secrets, that's where they come," Comey said. "So if we're going to be effective in fighting those bad guys on all those dimensions we've got to be effective in the digital space."

Comey was accompanied by U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who helped secure some funding for Champlain. The two learned about projects students are working on.

"We have to have the right equipment, we have to have the right training, but most of all we have to have the right folks sitting in those seats thinking well about the challenges, thinking creatively," Comey said at a news conference after the tour.

"And those folks are people like the folks here at the center. I told them all 'You've gotta come work for the FBI. Don't go working for any fancy private companies.' That is the future in more ways than one," he said. "We are only going to be successful if we attract the brains and the creativity we need to fight a criminal threat, a terrorist threat and an espionage threat that is getting increasingly sophisticated."

Champlain President Donald Laackman said he wants his school to be the "finest small professionally and globally focused college in the country." He said the Leahy Center positions the school for that distinction.

The Leahy Center provides services for law enforcement such as data recovery, technical assistance for law enforcement, analysis, organizational investigations, and research and development. The center is supported by the Justice Department and some Vermont law enforcement organizations.

Reprinted from the Associated Press. 

(Photo below) LCDI Director Jonathan Rajewski leads U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (VT-D) and FBI Director James Comey to the Leahy Center for Digital Investigation for a tour and to talk with cybersecurity students at Champlain College. 


OTHER MEDIA COVERAGE:

Burlington Free Press

Fox 44 and ABC 22

New England Cable News

WCAX


Jonathan Rajewski, Sen. Leahy and FBI Director James Comey.

Top officials visit LCDI


Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition. For the fourth year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2019 "America's Best Colleges,” and a “Best Value School” and is ranked in the top 100 “Regional Universities of the North” and in the top 25 for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2019 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2019 College of Distinction. For more information, visit champlain.edu.