On 11/12, Richard Lardner reported for the Associated Press on the downfall of David Petraeus. The article concentrated on how the FBI got access to Petraeus’ email account and “how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed.”
The AP’s Kimberly Dozier and Pete Yost on how Petraeus and Broadwell “used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic:” create a draft e-mail, leave it in the draft folder, and have the other person read it there. This AP article serves as an excellent overview of the entire episode.
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Along the same lines, Kim Zetter wrote for Wired on how “the nation’s top spy chief [was] [] undone so easily by digital footprints left behind in e-mail[.]” Zetter explained how the FBI used location data to track threatening e-mails, leading them to Paula Broadwell, which eventually led them to David Petraeus. Zetter asks an interesting question: why did the FBI investigate a few anonymous, harassing e-mails in the first place?
Edit: Zetter may have gotten her answer. Devlin Barrett, Evan Perez, and Siobhan Gorman report for the Wall Street Journal; the article is occasionally behind a paywall, so I won’t go too far. But it appears that an FBI agent involved in the case personally knew the person who received the anonymous harassing e-mails. Further, this same FBI agent sent “shirtless photos of himself to a woman involved in the case.” This story keeps getting stranger and stranger.
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John Reed, of Foreign Policy fame, questions whether our top spies should be using private e-mail services and whether the government should offer a secure e-mail service for both official and private use.
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