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http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/gmail-location-data-petraeus/

This indicates - to some degree - how the FBI was able to link a variety of 
e-mail accounts to one person.


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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