ented by capitals.]

The Secretary of the Treasury is the titular head of the Secret
Service, while the Attorney General is in charge of the FBI. In
Section (d), Congress shrugged off responsibility for the
computer-crime turf-battle between the Service and the Bureau, and made
them fight it out all by themselves. The result was a rather dire one
for the Secret Service, for the FBI ended up with exclusive
jurisdiction over computer break-ins having to do with national
security, foreign espionage, federally insured banks, and U.S. military
bases, while retaining joint jurisdiction over all the other computer
intrusions. Essentially, when it comes to Section 1030, the FBI not
only gets the real glamor stuff for itself, but can peer over the
shoulder of the Secret Service and barge in to meddle whenever it suits
them.

The second problem has to do with the dicey term "Federal interest
computer." Section 1030(a)(2) makes it illegal to "access a computer
without authorization" if that computer belongs to a financial
institution or an issuer of credit cards (fraud cases, in other words).
Congress was quite willing to give the Secret Service jurisdiction over
money-transferring computers, but Congress balked at letting them
investigate any and all computer intrusions. Instead, the USSS had to
settle for the money machines and the "Federal interest computers." A
"Federal interest computer" is a computer which the government itself
owns, or is using. Large networks of interstate computers, linked over
state lines, are also considered to be of "Federal interest." (This
notion of "Federal interest" is legally rather foggy and has never been
clearly defined in the courts. The Secret Service has never yet had
its hand slapped for investigating computer break-ins that were NOT of
"Federal interest," but conceivably someday this might happen.)

So the Secret Service's authority over "unauthorized access" to
computers covers a lot of territory, but by no means the whole ball of
cyberspatial wax. If you are, for instance, a LOCAL computer retailer,
or the owner of a LOCAL bulletin board system, then a malicious LOCAL
intruder can break in, crash your system, trash your files and scatter
viruses, and the U.S. Secret Service cannot do a single thing about it.

At least, it can't do anything DIRECTLY. But the Secret Service will
do plenty to help the local people who can.

The FBI may have dealt itself an ace off the bottom