A bipartisan bill introduced by four senators seeks to provide law enforcement agencies with tools to collect and report data about online crimes that affected individuals and businesses in the U.S.
The Better Cybercrime Metrics Act calls for the National Academies of Science to coordinate with public sector stakeholders, businesses and criminologists to organize a database that would classify and quantify malicious activities on the internet, the office of Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Thursday.
Schatz sponsored the bill with fellow Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; John Cornyn, R-Texas; and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., are the bill's sponsors.
The legislation would also mandate to add computer crime incidents to the bureau's reporting platforms and require the Bureau of Justice Statistics to incorporate cyber-related questions into the annual National Crime Victimization Survey.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that the total amount individuals and businesses lost to internet crimes, such as non-payment/non-delivery scams, increased from $3.5 billion in 2019 to $4.2 billion in 2020.