The Department of Homeland security is a bit different, they're charged with domestic operations and support (TSA).
The FBI is a Domestic Detective agency for lack of a better description. They're charged with being the Federal investigative force vs relying on varying state and city groups.
So yes, theres plenty for all of them to spy on / work on. Each have their own laws and limitations. That's why they're incestuous and work together on many projects.
Rule of thumb: If something contains the word 'Cyber' in it, it's gonna be clueless, bureaucratic and political, and utterly incompetently done.
Yet somehow Chinese and Russian cyberwar programs are pretty effective. Sounds like the US needs to catch up.
1. That vaunted "effectiveness" may be Just Another Missile Gap, i.e. a realistically non-existent threat used to drum up fear in the USA, to get greater funding from a terrorized public.
2. Lots of analysts say that both China and Russia tolerate unofficial hacking/cyberwar groups, as long as the targets are outside of China and Russia respectively. With some small amount of guidance done surreptitiously, the governments take advantage of a huge number of semi-criminals to serve "national security" needs without attribution.
3. Because of (2), ISO-9001, CMM level N don't apply. Faster coding. Similarly, Script Kiddies, Honkers and Nationalist Hackers don't do clearances, much less compartmentalized projects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance#Compartmente...) - this means that more people are available, from very diverse backgrounds, and they can collaborate and communicate as necessary.
Unless the USA is willing to quit being bureaucratic to the point of paralysis, it will never catch up.
I agree with the parent; there is substantial overlap in capabilities and responsibilities among the agencies that do intelligence work for the U.S. government.
These overlaps led directly to the mistaken Iraq invasion. DOD and CIA reported very different things about the Iraq WMD program, and the U.S. leadership could choose which one they wanted to believe. Cheney and Rumsfeld convinced Bush to listen to DOD, and we all know how that worked out.
The FBI changed their task to "national security" recently, and are now part of the "intelligence community" club.
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/fbis-main-mission-now-not...
It's an extension of the national security narrative. Agencies recognize the massive amount of funding and legislature on the horizon and want to see it diverted to them like it was to the DHS in the last decade.
Our own military and government barely know what the hell is going on within its own circles, there is absolutely no chance someone will be able to make sense of what is important and relevant. It's essentially a strategy of overwhelming with force and noise signal.
As the economic and global power we had been over the American Century we were able to play fast and loose and wild, whether our strategy will still work in this new century is a different story though. It may very well still work, it may very well lead to our demise. The only thing going for us is that there does not seem to be any alternative power and authority that is any less shitty than ours; whether that is due to natural factors of by CIA sabotage is a different story. Are we really all going to support China's or Russia's supplanting of American power in the world? It's not a good choice, but as horrible as we are, I'll go with the less bad over the worst any time.
The CIA and other agencies having its own smaller team probably means better outcomes. This kind of thing probably works best with smaller and more nimble teams than big data gathering focused organizations like the NSA.
From a budget perspective, this is good cause to cut from the NSA and give to the CIA.
That whole agency disco in the US is so confusing that I have the feeling this has to be the plan all the way or it's some kind of old cold war virus spawning divisions and agencies. Don't they all overlap? Is there enough reality for all of them to spy on?