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PRIVACY

Petraeus Affair Shows How Easily the FBI Can Read Your Emails

Privacy advocates point to latest DC scandal as evidence of growing problem

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by PolitixMayday

Staff Writer t

Image: AP

The continuing turmoil surrounding David Petraeus's sexual escapades with biographer Paula Broadwell has privacy-rights activists crying foul. Not over Petraeus's affair, but over how seemingly easy it is for the FBI to gain access to multiple private email accounts without a warrant, and to do so for relatively insignificant reasons.

Current cyber-privacy laws are laughably outdated, as the ACLU notes.

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Does the FBI's access to emails in the Petraeus affair make you concerned about online privacy?

Comments (view in Forum)

  • Romney2012
    !
    Unless I do something personal on it, and one of my freinds takes a picture of the PRIVATE email I sent him and puts in on Twitter, then it is reported as a threat and the FBI goes through my email which they shouldn't be able to do anyways.
  • View all 9 replies >
  • Keyjo
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    I'm always concerned over the lack of privacy for emails, texts, cell phone calls.
    Regulations ARE outdated and lacking. While a warrant is required for landlines, modern cyber communications seem to be bedroom windows without curtains.
  • Keyjo
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    @GetAwake
    Obviously you have forgotten, I don't have a wife, never will have a wife.
    Perhaps some day I'll have a husband, however.
  • View all 15 replies >
  • o
    woodtick57
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    this Broeadwell chick must be incredibly dense. she has an affair going that is easioly traceable via her emails and she starts sending threatening emails to another woman. Did she think no-one would look at her files?

    kind of as stupid as the employee that rails on their boss on facebook and forgets they friended that same boss.
  • kathyparsell
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    Dense...she obviously has some problems way beyond that. BUT how about the rebound onto the Ambassidor, bet she wishes now she had handled this herself instead of involving the Feds!
  • PNWest
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    There are so many ways to trace things online. If they want to find out what you've been up to they're gonna find out. You can try to hide but your traces are out there.
  • Dan_Shrigley
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    I think that it violates your expectation to privacy, unless it was on a government computer or network that was used to read private e-mail accounts by the legal user.

    There is warnings after warnings about being monitored on government computers and networks, you must take mandatory annual training to have a government computer and access to a gov. network especially Secret. So that if you broke a rule it would make a person deserving of the intrusion by authorities in this situation.

    If it was on his home or personal platform, over a non-government network, yes it violates his expectation to privacy and should require a warrant. But either way if you can't afford the punishment to do the act!
  • o
    NO-BAMA
    !
    Its exactly what the liberals want! They dream of the big "nanny state" where they can tell you what to see, say, eat, watch, listen to.
    They are the smartest people around. They know best. Just ask any one of them. They will be more than happy to state their credentials of "fairy-tale" dreams and living in harmony with Muslim terrorists, while everyone has a pet unicorn and a leprechaun with their own bottomless pot of gold.
    They wont be happy until every aspect of everyone else's lives are to "their" standards of equality.
    Welcome to the United Socialistic States of Utopianism.
  • martydotcom
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    Try again this is what hackers want. Wake up! why do you use anti virus/ spyware protection. It's not the nanny state that wants to access your computer your emails etc.
    i know nothing of your personal circumstances so I won't assume you have a bank account you access from your computer, but perhaps someone on you pilfered contacts has one.
    Be very paranoid about your computer security
  • o
    NO-BAMA
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    @martydotcom
    This has nothing to do with hackers. Its about the federal government doing whatever they want whenever they want without a warrant. Its exactly what the elitist leftist loons want. Complete control over their subjects, so then they can control any anti liberal "chatter". Maybe even infringe in the right of free speech/expression and have them arrested. Oh wait, that's already happened. Just ask the maker of that stupid anti Muslim movie. He in jail after a "probation" violation that just happen to come to light once Barry blamed his movie for terrorist acts that got Americans killed.
  • martydotcom
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    @NO-BAMA Subject line FBI reading email; the government is the least of our worries when it comes to reading emails or security and influencing thinking Google is more a threat to you. they know your thinking - every search, your buying habit they know what makes you tick more than the Feds
  • martydotcom
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    cyber attacks in Iran reportedly not only took control of nuke centrifuges, key logging was enabled as was Bluetooth. if an operator had a Bluetooth capable cell phone the phone could be infected or could then in turn infect any other Bluetooth capable computer the operator came in contact with. Whomever infected the computer knew every keystroke, every password, all data entered and you think email is safe????
  • u
    RobertJHarsh
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    Of course, and if even if the admins know it or not, a nightly dump of this site is uploaded to some govt database somewhere. I don't care. This is hardly the first site I have ever been on and be "opinionated". But you are correct, no one is anonymous anymore, unless you know what you are doing and have taken the proper precautions.
  • FFX_VA
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    @RobertJHarsh Free Vote Up for anyone who knows what "non-repudiation" in relation to Cyber Security means. Wiki answers don't count.
  • truthsayer
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    There was never any doubt in my mind we have no privacy from the government. I believe we have the right to it but just as with every other legal constraint that was place on government by the Constitution it violates and ignores them. It is all done in the name of the greater good. It is really done out of fear. People justify it by saying " If you don't have anything to hide" but it is really fear. People will give up anything when there scared. Unfortunately that also means they will and have given up freedoms, rights and the Constitution which guarantees them. The really scary thing to me is most are not aware of what we have let happen.
  • kathyparsell
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    I never assume that anything that I say or access over the internet is safe from prying. You evidently don't have to be The FBI to access what someone is doing you just have to be smart and have the right equiptment. That is scary to me.
  • u
    ctc
    !
    Fact is.....the more you try to hide your identity online......the bigger the target you become to the feds. You wanna play ball against organizations that can spin centrifuges out of control in Iran, or erase your existence with a single keystroke.....good luck.
  • u
    Jasonopolis
    !
    If they want to read my boring emails about my genealogy history, business transaction in the landscape industry, or email from former college professors, than they can read, read, read themselves into a nice deep sleep.... I do not care....
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