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 Linda Thomas
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Petraeus-Broadwell.jpg
This July 13, 2011, photo made available on the International Security Assistance Force's Flickr website shows former general David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell.(AP Photo)

Misusing the weapon that took down Petraeus - email

November 13, 2012 @ 12:28 pm (Updated: 7:52 am - 11/14/12 )

The sex scandal that led to CIA Director David Petraeus' downfall and prompted an investigation of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan was made possible by their digital footprints.

We all make footprints online every day and emails are not nearly as private as you think.

Email accounts ultimately exposed the affair between CIA director David Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell.

General John Allen is caught up in the scandal thanks to 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen's communications with Jill Kelley between 2010 and 2012.

Kelley works as a volunteer social planner for events at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida which is where Petraeus was a commander from 2008 until 2010.

What were they thinking?

They might have thought their discussions were safe because they weren't using their employer's account. You do know your employer can read all of your work emails if the boss wants to, right?

The former General Petraeus was using Gmail, from Google, a company that cooperates with government requests for data.

U.S. government agencies sought user data from Google 6,321 times for the six months ending December 2011, which was up from 5,950 during the first six months of 2011, according to Wired Magazine.

Petraeus and Broadwell tried to keep their communication private by not transmitting the emails. Instead of sending the messages, they composed some of them in the Gmail account and saved them as a "draft" message. The other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there.

This technique avoids creating an email trail, which is easier to trace. But, Google still has a record of draft messages.

Even an anonymous Gmail account would have exposed Petraeus. Gmail has logs of when messages are sent reveal the Internet address the user used to log onto the account. Matching times and dates with locations allow investigators to piece together the chain.

Also making it easy to gain access to the Petraeus and Allen emails, is the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor - not a judge - to obtain electronic messages.

While investigators sort out the sordid details, there are a few ways you can better protect your emails.

There are email services to maintain private, potentially incriminating, information through encryption. PrivateSky or Enlocked are two examples.

Other companies have been created to hide your IP (Internet Provider) address. Proxy services sit in between a sender and recipient, disguising the real email address of the user.

You could use disposable, one-time, email addresses. Broadwell was using multiple Gmail accounts to do multiple things. In one account she and Petraeus were leaving drafts of emails for each other so they weren't easily traceable. On another, she was allegedly sending harassing messages to a woman in Florida. Both accounts were linked together.

Or, here's an idea. Keep all your private stuff offline.

By LINDA THOMAS

More from Linda Thomas

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Comments (10)


  • Add A Comment

  • ron prevost wrote...
    How in the bloody heck do you run up 20 - 30,000 pages ?
    November 13, 2012 2:19 pm
    I'm trying to write a book for 2014 publication and 5% of that total would be much too much.

    But, not the point. Were this simply about sex, this story should have broke late summer - not 3 days AFTER the election. And with the pure fiction that the president was 'not informed'. ABC, CBS and Diane Feinstein all want answers. ... And true lies are just not going to cut it.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    Ron, I think it was 30,000 emails, not 30,000 pages of emails
    November 13, 2012 7:13 pm
    My current manuscript is up to 90,000 words (probably about 25-30 thousand to go) and if printed out would be about 200 typewritten pages.

    Nobody sending 30,000 emails to anybody, for any purpose, innocent or inappropriate, has time to properly oversee a military campaign.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Stevebo wrote...
    Not sure I agree with you on this one Linda.
    November 13, 2012 2:23 pm
    Arguably, the internet is changing the way in which we communicate. As such, I don't think the constitutionality of that communication has been fully fettered as of yet.

    I'd argue that there will need to be a time where it is fully argued in a court of law.

    I understand the point of search warrants - and therefore, why (with proper court documents, private e-mails can be searched.

    I think it gets a bit trickier when justification is made to "search" e-mails for "moral" issues - and that makes me very nervous (not for personal reasons, just in general). In Patreus' case I can see a rationale being made given potential leaking of classified information - but I also think we're treading on dangerous ground to not question it.

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  • roomtemp wrote...
    Nothing obfuscates a story like a good sex scandal...
    November 13, 2012 4:00 pm
    "General Petraeus was using Gmail"

    I had no idea that a coffee cup could transform into a neti pot that quickly! Seriously... Doesn't the head of the CIA have access to a triple crypted redundant proxy scalar wave quantum communicator whatchamacallit or something? He would have been better off with an Obamaphone. That's just sad, on many levels.

    Heck, I use google too but I'm not the head of the CIA and the biggest secret they could get from it is a cheesecake recipe. My plans for world domination are transmitted through handwritten notes and smoke signals only. (On a windy day it can be difficult to determine whether I'm supposed to arm the shark mounted lasers, or bring home some milk from the store though.)

    "You do know your employer can read all of your work emails if the boss wants to, right?"

    There's always the 'send it through someone else's terminal that nobody likes' approach. -oops, did I say that out loud?

    "There are [encrypted] email services"

    A. There is no encryption that they can't break, especially CIA/NSA types, whose hardware can do it in realtime and sits on every trunk line. B. If law enforcement asks you to decrypt something because you are under investigation, you must do it or that is a separate offense they can charge you with. At that point, you have to decide if the punishment is worse for what they will find, or withholding it.

    "You could use disposable, one-time, email addresses."

    Preferably from a McDonald's parking lot that's not in your neighborhood, running on a virtual machine with encryption and mac address spoofing software, bounced off a couple of proxies. Hey wait a minute, this is getting complicated. What are we doing again?

    Oh yeah, the mistress. Just meet her somewhere, it's easier. XD (kidding!)

    "Or, here's an idea. Keep all your private stuff offline."

    Let's call that... Plan A... ;-)

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • longwayhome wrote...
    ron
    November 13, 2012 6:40 pm
    How could you be writing a book when you can't put a coherent sentence together? Are you a member of the A J Mccarell club of large ego's and small brains? I think so, You are on a new roll after your party LOST last week, so now you become philosophical and are affecting a phony intellectual front. That is common for uneducated people to assume, give that this board is probably the only "writing" you will ever do. Maybe you could get together with A J and when he and his wife decide to run for office you could write their campaign speeches, and the its me moron idiot could be your P.R. man. Run as republicans and you could probably pull it off.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • Chuck Gould wrote...
    to longwayhome: Anybody can publish a book these days...
    November 13, 2012 7:19 pm
    There is no longer a bar to entry. Ron's not a bad writer when he takes his time to structure his sentences and connect his points of logic. Stuff posted to a site such as this one is just off the cuff drivel.

    You want to be a "published author"? Hey, no problem. Upload your stuff to Amazon, and you have a book, regardless of quality.

    Used to be where the top 30 best selling authors in the US might make an average of $1-million dollars a year. Some will still do very well, but we are approaching the point were 1-million authors now make an average of thirty bucks.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • ron prevost wrote...
    BTW, Chuck. Its a historical fantasy
    November 14, 2012 2:21 am
    WWI - suppose the Christmas truce of 1914 had held?

    I've uses muck shorter versions in story telling for years and thought it would be fun to write a real book. $30 or not.

    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • ron prevost wrote...
    Wrongway, you've got to be the most obnoxious of the left.
    November 14, 2012 2:16 am
    I fail to see how some off subject personal attack advances your 'cause' of ideas. Come to think of of, most of your ideas amount to 'you're wrong, so there'.

    Most of the left, we can occasionally find some common ground, but you...............................

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  • Republicans are losers wrote...
    I'm bored...
    November 14, 2012 7:36 am
    now that the election is over.
    { "Thumbs Up":"1","Thumbs Down":"-1" }
  • logical open mind wrote...
    repubs may be losers but mark my words the american people are losing every day, every year.
    November 14, 2012 3:17 pm
    Liberalism will not force kids to study, not force companies to stay in the US, not force federal spending sanity or force idiots to use the free birth control avaialble to them or even spend that whoping $8 per month. Liberalism will slowly weaken the US-it already has. Winning the popularity contest that is US politics ain't nearly even close to winning the battle of American decline. I got five years before Costa Rica in the winters!!!! (I was thinking Arizona but nah Ill spend my money out of country-the US is sinking and I dont want to be a part of this ship.
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