The U.S. House of Representatives is considering a bill that would give the FBI more resources to tackle cybercrime, especially online harassment, the Washington Post reports.
The bill by Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., would give the FBI 10 new agents whose sole jobs would be tackling threats made online. They would investigate stalkers and people who threaten violence.
Clark said online threats are increasing to alarming rates.
“While these threats may occur on the Internet, their impacts are far from virtual,” Clark told The Post. “They affect the bottom line for victims, who pay a real cost not just emotionally but also financially — in fees to attorneys and private investigators, or to services to scrub personally identifying information from the Web. I don’t think that women, who are the primary targets of this kind of abuse, should have to do this alone.”