[Vision2020] Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus Scandal

[Scott Dredge]

<Likewise, military law prohibits adultery>

I think such a prohibition is necessary considering the military offers an incentive of a bigger paycheck to those who are married and at the same time sends these men and women away from their spouses for long periods of time.

-Scott

Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:47:51 -0500
From: art.deco.studios at gmail.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus	Scandal




   
   


   
   


   


November 13, 2012

Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus Scandal

By 

SCOTT SHANE

 


 

    
The F.B.I. investigation that toppled the director of the C.I.A. and  has now entangled
 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-mails, text messages, social 
network postings and online photos, the work lives and personal lives of
 Americans are inextricably mixed. Private, personal 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, Fla., woman, Jill Kelley, a friend both of David H. Petraeus, 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 a cascade 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 was 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 delicate task of monitoring the Internet for 
dangerous intrusions.        

Advocates of 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 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.        




	







-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com





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