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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Real Reason You Should Care About the Petraeus Affair: Privacy
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 partyGoogle, Yahoo, Facebook, Friendster, or whateverfor 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 addressesunique identifiers that can usually be traced to specific geographical locationsof 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
(28,552 posts)..... 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
(12,769 posts)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
(28,552 posts)... 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
(14,881 posts)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
(2,518 posts)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
(9,841 posts)99Forever
(14,524 posts)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
(15,262 posts)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
(15,262 posts)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. Kelleys complaint to the FBI led to the discovery of Broadwell and Petraeus relationship, prompting Petraeus resignation on Friday. Were joined by Guardian columnist and blogger Glenn Greenwald. includes rush transcript
So youre talking about a massively invasive investigation without any of their knowledge, obtaining their most private and intimate communicationsall 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 howhow invasive and sprawling this unaccountable surveillance state has become ....
99Forever
(14,524 posts)Jester Messiah
(4,711 posts)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
(77,081 posts)nt
Jester Messiah
(4,711 posts)If there's something I don't want generally known... I don't talk about it! It's crazy, I know!