It strikes me that this affair (in all senses) could have been avoided if
some basic precautions were performed.
a) If Kelley granted the FBI access to her computer then surely she should
not have been surprised if they viewed all of her e-mail.
b) Perhaps she could have considered deleting or archiving e-mail she did
not want them to view.
c) If Broadwell was going to send so-called anonymous e-mails then perhaps
she should have done a better job (VPN / Tor).
d) The article infers - but does not state - that Broadwell sent these
'anonymous' e-mails from the same account that she used to contact
Petraeus. This is not exactly clever behaviour.
I would think that the issue is not so much concerns about blackmail but
more the public relations disaster if such 'indiscretions' were open.
"Hello, I am the new Commander of XYZ Forces in [Muslim Country] and I am
sleeping with some women who are not my wife." How would that look? Would
it win 'hearts and minds'?
On 14/11/12 15:20, gtmarx wrote:
> *Colleagues --the recent U.S. case raises many issues for those of our
> scholarly perusaion. The exploding linkage quality of this might (ala 6
> degrees of freedom) end up in an expanding geometric net involving almost
> all users. This represents such a radical break with the plodding, labor
> intensive, disaggregated, chance nature of so many investigations before
> computers in which privacy (for both good and ill was protected as much
> by inefficiency as by principles). However, in this case at least there
> was a warrant and some modest grounds to pursue something. There is an
> inherent and uneasy dilemma in any investigation re when to wait for some
> reasonable suspicion and when to act. Guidelines are essential, as is the
> discretion of wise supervisors. *
>
> **
>
> *The case also involves the challenges of whistle blowing ala the agent
> who did an end run around the chain of command to report his concerns
> that there was politically inspired foot dragging by his colleagues.
> Another provocative (so to speak) thought is whether, as with the CIA’s
> policy of accepting homosexual employees who openly acknowledge their
> preference, is to apply the same standard to marital indiscretion That
> would avoid the issue of blackmail, but might not help the sanctity of
> traditional marriage which is much in the news these days.*
>
> **
>
> **
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/david-petraeus-case-raises-concerns-about-americans-privacy.html?hp
>
>
>
> Petraeus Case Raises Fears About Privacy in Digital Era
>
>
> By SCOTT SHANE
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/scott_shane/index.html>
>
> The F.B.I.
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
> investigation that toppled the director of the C.I.A.
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
> and now threatens to tarnish
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/top-us-commander-in-afghanistan-is-linked-to-petraeus-scandal.html?hp>
> the reputation of the top American commander in Afghanistan
> underscores a danger that civil libertarians have long warned about:
> that in policing the Web for crime, espionage and sabotage,
> government investigators will unavoidably invade the private lives of
> Americans.
>
> On the Internet, and especially in e-mail, text messages, social
> network postings and online photos, the work lives and personal lives
> of Americans are inextricably mixed. Private, sensitive messages are
> stored for years on computer servers, available to be discovered by
> investigators who may be looking into completely unrelated matters.
>
> In the current F.B.I. case, a Tampa woman, Jill Kelley, a friend both
> of David H. Petraeus
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_h_petraeus/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
> the former C.I.A. director, and Gen. John R. Allen, the top NATO
> commander in Afghanistan, was disturbed by a half-dozen anonymous
> e-mails she had received in June. She took them to an F.B.I. agent
> whose acquaintance with Ms. Kelley (he had sent her shirtless photos
> of himself — electronically, of course) eventually prompted his
> bosses to order him to stay away from the investigation.
>
> But a squad of investigators at the bureau’s Tampa office, in
> consultation with prosecutors, opened a cyberstalking inquiry.
> Although that investigation is still open, law enforcement officials
> have said that criminal charges appear unlikely.
>
> In the meantime, however, there has been an earthquake of unintended
> consequences. What began as a private, and far from momentous,
> conflict between two women, Ms. Kelley and Paula Broadwell, Mr.
> Petraeus’s biographer and the reported author of the harassing
> e-mails, has had incalculable public costs.
>
> The C.I.A. is suddenly without a permanent director at a time of
> urgent intelligence challenges in Syria, Iran, Libya and beyond. The
> leader of the American-led effort to prevent a Taliban takeover in
> Afghanistan is distracted, at the least, by an inquiry into his
> e-mail exchanges with Ms. Kelley by the Defense Department’s
> inspector general.
>
> For privacy advocates, the case sets off alarms.
>
> “There should be an investigation not of the personal behavior of
> General Petraeus and General Allen but of what surveillance powers
> the F.B.I. used to look into their private lives,” Anthony D. Romero,
> executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an
> interview. “This is a textbook example of the blurring of lines
> between the private and the public.”
>
> Law enforcement officials have said they used only ordinary methods
> in the case, which might have included grand jury subpoenas and
> search warrants. As the complainant, Ms. Kelley presumably granted
> F.B.I. specialists access to her computer, which they would have
> needed in their hunt for clues to the identity of the sender of the
> anonymous e-mails. While they were looking, they discovered General
> Allen’s e-mails, which F.B.I. superiors found “potentially
> inappropriate” and decided should be shared with the Defense Department.
>
> In a parallel process, the investigators gained access, probably
> using a search warrant, to Ms. Broadwell’s Gmail account. There they
> found messages that turned out to be from Mr. Petraeus.
>
> Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy
> Information Center in Washington, said the chain of unexpected
> disclosures is not unusual in computer-centric cases.
>
> “It’s a particular problem with cyberinvestigations — they rapidly
> become open-ended, because there’s such a huge quantity of
> information available and it’s so easily searchable,” he said,
> adding, “If the C.I.A. director can get caught, it’s pretty much open
> season on everyone else.”
>
> For years now, as national security officials and experts have warned
> of a Pearl Harbor cyberattack that could fray the electrical grid or
> collapse stock markets, policy makers have jostled over which
> agencies should be assigned the sensitive task of monitoring the
> Internet for dangerous intrusions.
>
> Advocates for civil liberties have been especially wary of the
> National Security Agency, whose expertise is unrivaled but whose
> immense surveillance capabilities they see as frightening. They have
> successfully urged that the Department of Homeland Security take the
> leading role in cybersecurity.
>
> That is in part because the D.H.S., if far from entirely open to
> public scrutiny, is much less secretive than the N.S.A., the
> eavesdropping and code-breaking agency. To this day, N.S.A. officials
> have revealed almost nothing about the warrantless wiretapping it
> conducted inside the United States in the hunt for terrorists in the
> years after 2001, even after the secret program was disclosed
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all>
> by The New York Times in 2005 and set off a political firestorm.
>
> The hazards of the Web as record-keeper, of course, are a familiar
> topic. New college graduates find that their Facebook postings give
> would-be employers pause. Husbands discover wives’ infidelity by
> spotting incriminating e-mails on a shared computer. Teachers lose
> their jobs over impulsive Twitter comments.
>
> But the events of the last few days have shown how law enforcement
> investigators who plunge into the private territories of cyberspace
> looking for one thing can find something else altogether, with
> astonishingly destructive results.
>
> Some people may applaud those results, at least in part. By having a
> secret extramarital affair, for instance, Mr. Petraeus was arguably
> making himself vulnerable to blackmail, which would be a serious
> concern for a top intelligence officer. What if Russian or Chinese
> intelligence, rather than the F.B.I., had discovered the e-mails
> between the C.I.A. director and Ms. Broadwell?
>
> Likewise, military law prohibits adultery — which General Allen’s
> associates say he denies committing — and some kinds of
> relationships. So should an officer’s privacy really be total?
>
> But some commentators have renewed an argument that a puritanical
> American culture overreacts to sexual transgressions that have little
> relevance to job performance. “Most Americans were dismayed that
> General Petraeus resigned,” said Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U.
>
> That old debate now takes place in a new age of electronic
> information. The public shaming that labeled the adulterer in
> Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” might now be accomplished by
> an F.B.I. search warrant or an N.S.A. satellite dish.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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