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No Money for Email at the FBI

Originally published by "dbarker" on 2006-03-20 14:58:00Z

FBI, you’ve got mail – NOT!: This seems a little…odd, to me.

Budget constraints are forcing some FBI agents to operate without e-mail accounts, according to the agency’s top official in New York.

“As ridiculous as this might sound, we have real money issues right now, and the government is reluctant to give all agents and analysts dot-gov accounts,” Mark Mershon said when asked about the gap at a New York Daily News editorial board meeting.

Comment by "Dan Berkes" on 2006-03-21 07:01:00Z
I'm going to take a wild guess here and speculate that the internal email accounts are run directly by the bureau, and the public-facing .gov stuff is outsourced to someone charging Uncle Sugar a per-person fee.

It makes sense to me, but I've been up for 20 hours.

Comment by "Anonymous" on 2006-03-21 09:17:00Z
lets all donate our gmail invites ^_^
Comment by "Dave" on 2006-03-21 16:31:00Z
On the face, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but if you think about the level of bureacracy at the FBI and every other government organization, and the need to keep CYA backups of every little communicated tidbit, it makes more sense. But still, what's the alternative for those who are denied the .gov address? Something like fbi-guy at gmail dot com?
Comment by "Scott" on 2006-03-22 15:11:00Z
I wish I could talk to the outsourcing piece. I don't know the answer to that though...I'm close enough to have an idea of what's going on over there, but not close enough to have details. I seriously doubt that they'd consider doing something like GMail. Agencies like that (DoD is the same way) want to own the infrastructure at some level. Even areas where they're outsourcing IT, the servers and their data sit inside their own server rooms.
Comment by "raj" on 2006-03-22 16:45:00Z
I have about 4500 free email accounts. Wonder if the FBI wants them }:?)