Posted on 11/12/2012 6:34:11 PM PST by TigerClaws
CIA Director David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, a former military intelligence officer and his biographer, adopted a well-worn online trick, in an apparent attempt to keep their communications secret.
(Excerpt) Read more at m.washingtonpost.com ...
Anything put on the internet in any shape or form can be read by anyone with just a little knowledge. And is there FOREVER.
The irony - old fashion just talking or sending a letter through snail mail may be the most secure.
the reason I use email is I want a record
tactic of terrorists
spy film “Traitor.”
teen-agers
CIA Director David Petraeus
It reminds me of a story that occurred in my neck of the woods not too long ago.
Charles Wang, the founder and former CEO of Computer Associates (now known as CA) never used e-mail. He was the mastermind behind a billion dollar fraud that made him a very wealthy man.
Meanwhile, his minions (including Sanjay Kumar) spilled their guts (via e-mail) and were destroyed by the Feds.
Lesson learned.
US Media to US Citizens: “LOOK! SQUIRREL!!!”
Which is why it's best to be honest.
My dog can catch the occasional squirrel.
Bingo.
A well-covered arse is a happy arse.
Oh for crying out loud! Thanks General Petraeus.
Everything into and out of a communications pipe it tracked. This has been in place in the corporate world for at least 20 years based on my experience. I was a consultant in a civil case like this waaaay back...
google mail... monitored by the NSA ... every key you click
exactly how does the head of the CIA not understand this?
how can ANYONE become the head of our intelligence organization and have such horrid security practices??
doesn’t smell right
I’m leaning towards setup to keep him from testifying on Benghazi
Patraeus should have heeded the old dictum: Wrong no man — write no woman.
“they’ can read through paper these days ~ if they want ~ and no one in USPS would detect the installation of the equipment to do the job.
Nice line.
Look, this is all over the driveby media. It’ll all lead back to Benghazi and hurt the administration.
he may be part of it gang ~
Meanwhile, his minions (including Sanjay Kumar) spilled their guts (via e-mail) and were destroyed by the Feds.
Interesting. I worked for CA in the late 80's and knew both of them. I recall that Wang always carried around a paper notebook in which he wrote all his notes.
stars may get you women but women will get your stars/ edited from
your badge may get you $%##^ but ^&*%^ will get your badge...advice given to new LEO’s everywhere
I have to give credit that they at least didn’t use MyFace.
Unencrypted on Google’s server, and he was our chief spook??
Okay, plain text in a drop box accessed only through a Tor router might count as a sort of steganography, since no one not privy to its existence and (virtual) location would even think to look for it, but unencrypted on Google’s servers in an account identifiably belonging to one of the principals???
(It’s not like folks having an affair have problems with implementing a key agreement protocol.)
Paraphrasing a radio commentator:
If the Head of Intelligence doesn’t know how to keep an affair secret, maybe he isn’t so intelligent.
In 1564 Musashi, one of the greatest sword masters in Japanese history wrote, in "A Book of Five Rings" about 9 things a man must know or do to be a success - Do not think dishonestly was one of them. Ten years ago the ten secrets to success as produced by interviews with 100+ successful business people - #10 Be Honest or the first 9 don't matter.
Pretty clever.
Trying to be anonymous on the Internet is a losers game.
Best you can possibly do is encrypt content with PGP which will raise all sorts of red flags and the sender’s and recipient’s IPs, which can then be used to find names, are still out there.
Best way to communicate would be talking/texting between two throwaway cellphones.
Funny, isn't it? What I find most amusing is that they were using a 'shared' gmail account. Gmail is the least private email that I can imagine - even the drafts are scanned and mined for data, and thus, copies are cached on their servers. Plus, by loggin in, the account data will provide the IP addresses where the log-ins came from. Surely he was smart enough to use TOR or a string of anonymous proxy servers............well, he was using gmail, so I guess all bets are off on further security. Now, temporary hushmail accounts that self deleted on a daily basis logged into through TOR, now we are STARTING to get private. Idiots!
Funny, isn't it? What I find most amusing is that they were using a 'shared' gmail account. Gmail is the least private email that I can imagine - even the drafts are scanned and mined for data, and thus, copies are cached on their servers. Plus, by loggin in, the account data will provide the IP addresses where the log-ins came from. Surely he was smart enough to use TOR or a string of anonymous proxy servers............well, he was using gmail, so I guess all bets are off on further security.
Now, temporary hushmail accounts that self deleted on a daily basis logged into through TOR, now we are STARTING to get private. Idiots!
and even those can be tied to time and location by tower triangulation. Get new ones every week or so and pay cash.
We should not be looking at the man’s personal email. We live in a total surveillance society.
Or as a former basketball coach of mine used to say, "Keep your lovin' in your pants and keep your pants zipped."
I agree completely. Mind you, Petraeus did not imbibe tradecraft with his mother's milk, but even so one-time pads to conceal love notes is a bit of overkill.
What we see here is a bit of agenda peeping through. The reporter is mocking the inadequacy of communications security for two people who were apparently having an affair. This is our business precisely why? And if he had employed the full force of his agency's technical expertise in concealing the affair, would this not have been an outrageous abuse of power?
An extramarital affair in Washington, DC, possibly the first that has ever taken place there. Or not. Why is this even news? Why the sudden national focus on two bed-hopping adults? What is it serving to conceal?
Benghazi, of course. This is a smokescreen so obvious that the stink of desperation pervades it. The General has just had a taste of what happens if he talks. It's the Chicago Way.
Though I have an FR name it doesn’t really bother me to think someone would like to know who I am. Anything they take off my computer would only be what I would be glad to have shared with the world.
Learning some basic trade craft(dead drops,cut outs,anonymous e-mail software) doesn’t hurt either.
It is our business since it leaves the man open to blackmail . The honey trap is literally one the oldest & widest used tactics for getting people to spy against/betray their country.The general was not schooled at all in even the basics of tradecraft. Surely the head of the CIA is given at least a rudimentary class on the most basic of fundamentals of the spy business.
Their level of security was perfectly adequate if the purpose was simply to conceal their affair.
The problem arose when she got paranoid about a possible rival, and then decided, tradecraft be damned, to let the cat-fight begin! Not realizing, of course, that the target of the cat fight might enlist the powers of the shirtless FBI.
It astounds me that a top West Point grad with experience in intelligence work would hit Send multiple times not considering that IP addresses and locations can be tracked and correlated with book tours and hotel stays and accesses to other accounts. LOL!
If only he was the only man in Washington to have an affair! Every president did the same thing - even carter with the lust thing. JFK nailed everyone, Ike had his military driver.....etc.
The media makes a a mountain out of this when the real story is Benghazi.
The trick is use two accounts. Use one hotmail for your outgoing and use gmail for her outgoing. You know when it’s been read because its been deleted and the response is in the other one.
Of course you don’t mention the other box or write names.
These guys are idiot.
My high school football coach used to tell us on thursday before a game that he wanted us in bed by 9 and up and headed home by 10!
Rather than transmitting emails to the other’s inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic “dropbox,” the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
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