In the aftermath of the shooting rampage in San Bernardino, FBI teams recovered computer hard drives, flash drives and crushed cellphones left by the attackers. They flew the evidence to technical sleuths at a special FBI facility in Northern Virginia. At the same time, a crew from the bureau’s lab there jetted to California to help reconstruct the shooting.
The tragedy in California is the latest big case that involves the mostly unseen scientists who work for the FBI’s Amy Hess in Quantico, Va. She is the FBI’s executive assistant director for science and technology, the master of much that is cool — and controversial — in the bureau’s arsenal of high-tech tools.
Amy Hess, the FBI’s executive assistant director for science and technology, at the agency’s facility in Quantico, Va. (Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
At Quantico on any given day, you might see FBI technicians pick apart a cellphone flown in from an overseas battlefield. Or robots processing DNA samples from convicted felons. Or in a room as large as a football field, scientists testing the signal strength of a radio antenna.
But even as it is developing biometric databases, rapid DNA-matching machines and laser-beam imagery for ballistic purposes — or trying to extract data from crushed cellphones that might offer insight into the San Bernardino shooters’ motives — the FBI is struggling to meet ever more complex technological challenges.
In cyber investigations, a crucial part of the bureau’s work, current and former agents say that the Operational Technology Division, or OTD, which Hess oversees, has failed to provide adequate tools to analyze massive amounts of digital data in hacking and cyberspying cases.
And despite the wizardry of its technologists, who also excel at traditional physical and electronic surveillance, the bureau is at a loss to solve what FBI Director James B. Comey has called one of the most worrisome problems facing law enforcement today: the advent of strong commercial encryption on cellphones where only the user can unlock the data.
At the same time, the bureau is facing concerns that the technologies it deploys — cellphone tracking, computer hacking and facial and iris recognition — lack sufficient protections for citizens’ privacy.
Hess says she considers it a privilege to be where she is. “When I’m sitting in the morning meetings with the director and deputy director, I know that the folks in my branch somehow contributed to the big case we’re all talking about that day,” she said.
Born and raised in a suburb of Louisville, Hess, 49, entered the FBI Academy in 1991, the second-youngest in her class, a good athlete and a whiz at video games.
“Even though my parents were essentially pacifists, we didn’t have guns in the house, I learned hand-eye coordination to the point where I got the Top Gun award for my
Hess, who has an astronautical engineering degree, started in the bureau’s science and engineering program. But her career path also took her into traditional cops-and-robbers investigations and domestic and international terrorism cases, including stints at headquarters and in Afghanistan.
In 2014, she was tapped to head science and technology. She has more people working for her — about 6,000 — than any other FBI branch. Her branch also has the single largest budget — somewhere between $600 million and $800 million. The bureau will not say how much.