<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style></head>
<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>
<Likewise, military law prohibits adultery><br><br>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.<br><br>-Scott<br><br><div><div id="SkyDrivePlaceholder"></div><hr id="stopSpelling">Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:47:51 -0500<br>From: art.deco.studios@gmail.com<br>To: vision2020@moscow.com<br>Subject: [Vision2020] Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus Scandal<br><br>
<div class="header">
<div class="ecxleft">
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo153x23.gif" alt="The New York Times" align="left" hspace="0" border="0" vspace="0"></a>
</div>
<div class="ecxright">
</div>
</div>
<br clear="all"><hr align="left" size="1">
<div class="ecxtimestamp">November 13, 2012</div>
<h1>Online Privacy Issue Is Also in Play in Petraeus Scandal</h1>
<h6 class="ecxbyline">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/scott_shane/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by SCOTT SHANE" target="_blank"><span>SCOTT SHANE</span></a></span></h6>
<div id="ecxarticleBody">
The <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Federal Bureau of Investigation." class="ecxmeta-org" target="_blank">F.B.I.</a> investigation that toppled the director of the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org" title="More articles about the Central Intelligence Agency." class="ecxmeta-org" target="_blank">C.I.A.</a> and <a title="New York Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/us/top-us-commander-in-afghanistan-is-linked-to-petraeus-scandal.html?hp" target="_blank"> has now entangled</a>
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. <BR>
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.
<BR>
In the current F.B.I. case, a Tampa, Fla., woman, Jill Kelley, a friend both of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/david_h_petraeus/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about David H. Petraeus." class="ecxmeta-per" target="_blank">David H. Petraeus</a>, the former C.I.A. director, and Gen. <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/john_r_allen/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about John R. Allen." class="ecxmeta-per" target="_blank">John R. Allen</a>,
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
For privacy advocates, the case sets off alarms. <BR>
“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.” <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
“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.” <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
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 <a title="New York Times article" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">was disclosed</a> by The New York Times in 2005 and set off a political firestorm. <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
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? <BR>
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? <BR>
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. <BR>
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. <BR>
<div class="ecxarticleCorrection">
</div>
</div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br><br><img src="http://users.moscow.com/waf/WP%20Fox%2001.jpg"><br><br>
<br>=======================================================
List services made available by First Step Internet,
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
http://www.fsr.net
mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com
=======================================================</div> </div></body>
</html>