How Much Did The FBI Snoop On Email Messages To Uncover The Petreaus Situation?
from the all-for-what? dept
As you're probably aware since it's "the big story" right now, General David Petreaus stepped down last week after an FBI investigation turned up an affair he'd been having. It seems that every few hours more news "breaks" on the story, and it keeps getting more involved, with a growing number of players (and with each new revelation the story gets more and more bizarre). However, some have started wondering how and why the FBI was snooping on various emails. The original story was that it came about after Petreaus' mistress allegedly sent threatening (anonymous) emails to another woman, who reported them to the FBI. From that came a wider investigation, which supposedly may involve another General and a variety of other players. But some are realizing that this seems to show how the FBI has pretty free rein in terms of snooping on email accounts hosted online:Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. To get more recent communications, a warrant from a judge is required. This is a higher standard that requires proof of probable cause that a crime is being committed.But even that isn't entirely clear. Folks like Julian Sanchez have been puzzling through the timeline of events and wondering how a simple investigation into a small number of "rude" (but not illegal) emails then uncovered thousands of questionable emails involving a different general as alleged in the news that broke last night. It feels like the FBI may have taken a simple report of misconduct (which may have been driven by another love triangle issue involving an FBI agent who seemed to take the whole thing a lot more personally than makes sense) and turned it into a massive fishing expedition.
Given how fast new parts of this story keep breaking, I'm sure there are still a number of other dominoes to fall, but hopefully this actually gets people to pay attention to just how easy it is for law enforcement to snoop on people's emails these days based on next to nothing.
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Filed Under: david petreaus, email, expa, fbi, snooping, warrants
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Is any email sacred?
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Re: Is any email sacred?
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Re: Re: Is any email sacred?
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Typo
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No one is safe
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Re: No one is safe
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Re: Re: No one is safe
Because of the partisanship of our Congress, Eric Cantor tried to user this in October to affect the election.
I find it amazing that Republicans would stoop so low but they hanger always tried to sabotage elections for personal gain since Nixon sabotaged the 68 elections by destroying the Vietnam peace accord.
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Re: No one is safe
The lesson learned by congress is that the FBI probably already has their resignation on file, so don't speak up.
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Re: No one is safe
One of the interesting things that came up in the Jane Harman AIPAC thing a few years ago (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/the_harman-aipac_story_a_timeline.php) was that the DoJ apparently held a wiretap recording over Jane Harman's head, to get a key vote.
The FBI has compromised the US Congress.
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Petraeus isn't a "people", he's a public servant.
A must-read:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/the-sins-of-general-david-petraeus
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Wow, I had to tie the tinfoil hat on real tight for that one.
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Re:
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Re: FBI reviewing every email
Why the shortcut? What is wrong with asking a judge for permission before snooping on God knows what? Why do you accept violation of your privacy for someone else's indiscretion?
You may not realize it, but you are arguing for a police state.
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Re: Re: FBI reviewing every email
There's an important difference between surveillance of the CIA, including people who hang out with CIA personnel, and wholesale surveillance of our entire society.
So, no, I am not arguing for a police state.
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I hate to call conspiracy
The FBI has played this role in government in the past it's not shocking that they'd do it again.
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Re: I hate to call conspiracy
I would say there is a 50/50 chance that the FBI was simply fed information to lead them right where certain people wanted them to go.
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Tenuous rules?
Off the top of my headI can only see two ways:
1/ Get the email provider to pre-filter the inbox and olny hand over the allowed bit... Which seems unlikely since it then costs the provider more in man-hours to action and besides what the hell are they doing snooping through a private inbox?
2/ The ISP hand over the lot and the FBI promise faithfully to not look at anything they shouldn't without a warrant... (Boy, that was hard to type with a straight face)
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Re: Tenuous rules?
With a well placed server or two they can easily collect, filter, and store all email for many, many domains.
Starting in 1997 you have:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnivore_(software)
Followed by NarusInsight:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NarusInsight
And those are only a couple of the ones we KNOW about. It would not surprise me to learn that nearly all email is scanned, and much of it stored, as those ones and zeros go zipping down the line.
Don't want your email to be spied on? PGP or GPG
No I don't wear a tin hat but I do work in IT. Where I work all email is copied off and 'archived', most users know nothing about it.
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Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
If they need a warrant to look at something they already have that raises a whole bunch of other questions doesn't it? Not to mention making it even harder to keep a straight face when saying they won't look at anything they're not allowed to...
Indeed... I believe GCHQ do a good line in that too. I can never make head or tail out of the conflicting jurisdictions of the ludicrous amounts of federal agencies in the US, but I'd understood that the FBI technically was supposed to get a warrant to spy on americans and most of the rest supposedly "aren't allowed" (though getting the info from a friendly government that did it for you works I suppose)
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Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
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Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
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Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
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Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Tenuous rules?
Maybe the subpoena is from the prosecutors office to the FBI, or some third party "shell agency".
Then again, it could just be to make it all nice and 'legal' since the government is not supposed to be spying on US citizens. They already have the information, but they subpoena the information so it is in a nice neat package.
It is easy enough for an email provider to do a date range or any other filtering.
I have been asked on more than one occasion to filter over a half million emails down to a few hundred (This was a corporate email dump). It doesn't take long. From who, to whom, Before Date...
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Misspelling of "Petreaus"
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Tin Foil Hats
Do you suppose the end of the world crowd may be right too!
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None
If he doesn't know how then why is he in charge?
This is a scam to keep him from testifying and to redirect media attention.Just the kind of thing the CIA excels in.
I mean come on...using gmail and expecting privacy?
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Re: Mail Drop
How-ever, Why did the FBI compomise this Intelligence source on such a trite matter, do they want to justify new anti-privacy laws?
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