Congressman Blake Moore’s Bipartisan Better Cybercrime Metrics Act Signed into Law
WASHINGTON – Yesterday, Congressman Blake Moore’s Better Cybercrime Metrics Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden. This bipartisan, bicameral bill will improve the federal government’s understanding, measurement, and tracking of cybercrime. Congressman Moore co-led this legislation in the House alongside Representatives Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), and Andrew Garbarino (R-NY).
“Cybercrime is one of the top security threats facing Americans today,” said Congressman Blake Moore. “It is imperative that we equip the government to better understand and address the challenges of cybercrime so we can improve our national cybersecurity infrastructure. I am grateful to the members of the House and Senate who supported this bill, and I look forward to seeing the many the ways it will positively impact all Americans.”
The federal government currently lacks an effective system to measure cybercrime. In 2018, a nonpartisan study from Gallup found that nearly one in four U.S. households were a victim of cybercrime — making it the most common crime in America. However, the large majority of these crimes are not properly reported or tracked — and in many cases, these incidents are not measured at all. By some estimates, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) only collects about one in 90 of all cybercrime incidents in its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) database.
The bipartisan Better Cybercrime Metrics Act would improve how the federal government tracks, measures, analyzes, and prosecutes cybercrime. By starting the process of building an effective system to delineate and track cybercrime incidents, this legislation would allow U.S. law enforcement agencies to better identify cyberthreats, prevent attacks, and prosecute perpetrators.
Companion legislation is led in the U.S. Senate by U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). Additional U.S. Senate cosponsors on the legislation are Thom Tillis (R-NC), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Specifically, the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act would improve federal cybercrime metrics by:
- Requiring the Government Accountability Office to report on the effectiveness of current cybercrime mechanisms and highlight disparities in reporting data between cybercrime data and other types of crime data,
- Requiring that the National Crime Victimization Survey incorporate questions related to cybercrime in its survey instrument,
- Requiring the U.S. Department of Justice to contract with the National Academy of Sciences to develop a taxonomy for cybercrime that can be used by law enforcement, and
- Ensuring that the National Incident Based Reporting System — or any successor system — include cybercrime reports from federal, state, and local officials.
BACKGROUND
The Uniform Crime Reporting Act of 1988 requires all federal law enforcement agencies to report crime data through the FBI. However, federal agencies like the FBI and Secret Service — which often have jurisdiction over crimes within the broader definition of cybercrime — are not consistently reporting these numbers into the federal systems. State and local law enforcement reporting on cybercrime is also limited and inconsistently reported to federal agencies.
This lack of detailed, consistent systems for collecting and categorizing data on cybercrime is an impediment to understanding the scope of the problem — thus impairing law enforcement’s ability to protect against cybercrime.
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