The Real Reason You Should Care About the Petraeus Affair: Privacy

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:




The Real Reason You Should Care About the Petraeus Affair: Privacy
If the CIA director couldn't keep his emails secret, neither can you.

—By Adam Serwer
| Thu Nov. 15, 2012 3:03 AM PST


CIA Director David Petraeus, one of the most lauded military leaders of his generation, resigned last week after an FBI investigation into email harassment uncovered evidence of his affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell. Here's why you should care: If the director of the CIA can't keep his private life secret from the FBI, you can't either.

It is easy for federal authorities to get access to your online activities. If you think the feds need a warrant to start looking at your email, you're dead wrong. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the law governing online communications, was written in 1986. Congress wasn't sure whether to treat email, then in its infancy, more like letters or phone calls. People used to download their email back then, so leaving your information on a company's server meant the feds had to do less paperwork to access it. Now everyone's information is stored online, but that archaic standard is still in place.

"Now everything is kept in the cloud on Google and Yahoo's servers," says Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU. "That quirk of the law has become hugely important for Americans' privacy." Once you've opened an email or your Facebook account, you've provided your personal information to a third party. The government can then ask that third party—Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, or whatever—for your information, and they don't necessarily need a warrant. The Constitution protects you from unreasonable search and seizure by the government. It doesn't stop third parties from sharing personal information you willingly give them. Likewise, there's no warrant needed to acquire the IP addresses—unique identifiers that can usually be traced to specific geographical locations—of people accessing those email accounts. According to the Wall Street Journal, that's exactly how the FBI figured out Broadwell was behind the allegedly harassing emails that sparked the investigation that uncovered the Petraeus affair.

That's not all. All your emails that are more than six months old are legally treated as online "storage" and accessible with a court order or a subpoena to the online service provider. The providers can say no, but usually they don't. By contrast, listening in on someone's phone calls requires a warrant based on probable cause, along with a showing that the FBI has done everything else in their power to acquire the information they're seeking. Now that many people communicate more frequently via email and instant messages than via phone conversations, the difference in standards doesn't make much sense. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has proposed a bill that would subject requests for online communications to the same high standards required for tapping phones, but Congress doesn't seem all that interested in passing it yet. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/cia-petraeus-fbi-broadwell-emails-privacy

[sendero]

1. That ship sailed..

..... long ago. Good luck putting THAT toothpaste back in the tube.

You should assume that law enforcement can listen to your cell phone calls or read you email any time they want.

Also, I disagree with the premise of the article that someone in Patreaus' position should have more privacy. Not true at all. It is the price you pay for being in that position.

What Patreaus didn't count on was a dizzy broad writing threatening emails. But he should have.

[Live and Learn]

4. I think you misunderstood the premise.

The premise is that the 1% should now see that not only have they taken our privacy but in doing so they have usurped their own privacy and it will be difficult to undo now.

This is exactly how karma is supposed to play out.

[sendero]

11. Premise..

... is that once you had warrantless wiretapping going on en masse and nothing was done about it, you can pretty much kiss your expectation of privacy goodbye.

And you can completely forget about the 1% being concerned about it, in their delusional minds they never do anything wrong or if they did it is nobody's business.

I guess my bottom line is rail all you want, this is not going to change.

[magical thyme]

2. Meh. The General and his snookie have less privacy than the rest of us

The have access to classified info.

It took email harassment (a crime) to launch the backward probe into snookie's email, and potential national security breaches to skim through Patreaus' writing.

I can live with that.

[toddaa]

3. Strong encryption

If you use close services from Google or Amazon, you need to encrypt everything. Same with email. Learn how to use tools like GnuPGP. The only way to counter the loss of privacy is strong encryption.

[reformist2]

5. They probably flag computers that use encryption software.

[99Forever]

6. Like sheep to the slaughter.

When I posted of this very concern, just a couple of days ago here, I was poo poo'ed. The police state has it's claws dug in. The coming years will teach lessons that none can yet imagine. I'm glad I am not going to live to see it.

[Coyotl]

7. Glenn Greewald - stars of America's national security devoured by out-of-control surveillance

FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation
That the stars of America's national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance is a form of sweet justice

Glenn Greenwald - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/13/petraeus-surveillance-state-fbi

[Coyotl]

8. Greenwald: the FBI, based on really no evidence of any actual crime, engaged in this massive ..."

VIDEO: Glenn Greenwald: While Petraeus Had Affair with Biographer, Corporate Media Had Affair with Petraeus
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/14/glenn_greenwald_while_petraeus_had_affair

The scandal that brought down CIA director David Petraeus has spread to the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen. The Pentagon says the FBI has uncovered thousands of "potentially inappropriate" emails between Allen and Jill Kelley, the woman who complained of harassment from Petraeus’ biographer and lover, Paula Broadwell. Kelley’s complaint to the FBI led to the discovery of Broadwell and Petraeus’ relationship, prompting Petraeus’ resignation on Friday. We’re joined by Guardian columnist and blogger Glenn Greenwald. includes rush transcript

GLENN GREENWALD: I think there is a lot of media focus on the salacious aspects of this case for reasons that are obvious, which is that the media loves sex scandals. But there are real issues arising from this of genuine importance and substance, beginning with the fact that the FBI, based on really no evidence of any actual crime, engaged in this massive surveillance effort of, first, obtaining all kinds of intimate and private information about two women, one of whom complained, one of whom was the target of the complaint, Paula Broadwell and Jill Kelley; learned the locations and email accounts of Paula Broadwell, who was the subject of this fairly innocuous complaint; read through all of her emails; learned the identity of her anonymous lover, David Petraeus; likely read—certainly read through all of her emails, probably read through his; and then, in the process, as well, learned about an affair between the complainant, Jill Kelley—or not an affair, but inappropriate communications, as they’re calling it, and the four-star general in Afghanistan, General Allen; and then obtained 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails between them, as well.

So you’re talking about a massively invasive investigation without any of their knowledge, obtaining their most private and intimate communications—all without evidence of any predicate crime, really without the need, except in a few cases, for judicial view or oversight. And, to me, it really illustrates how—how invasive and sprawling this unaccountable surveillance state has become ....

[99Forever]

12. ^^^^^THIS!^^^^^^

[Jester Messiah]

9. Privacy is every person's own responsibility.

If you don't want Google or Yahoo to know about it, don't put it out there. Don't put the details of your private life on Facebook, and then Facebook won't have them to sell to the highest (or all) bidders. This stuff ain't hard, folks. We just have to reacquaint ourselves with the concept of discretion.

[marmar]

10. So are you going to create some new language for your phone conversations too?

nt

[Jester Messiah]

13. Even better:

If there's something I don't want generally known... I don't talk about it! It's crazy, I know!