The Petraeus-Broadwell scandal has taken a life of its own and has grown into Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen scandal, and an FBI agent now involved with a shirtless photo email.
Goodness knows how many more people are going to be sucked in, tarnished and their family members embarrassed or shamed.
But that is not the point of this post. Washington Post ran ‘What Petraeus and Broadwell could have used instead of Gmail’ to protect their secrets. Which gave me the idea.
You see the Washington Post blog (and the earlier Foreign Policy article) both talk of alternate email systems to Gmail. Both have missed the nuance of the text (no pun intended) [http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/12/should_our_top_spies_be_using_gmail].
Their thrust is using anonymous or temporary email IDs and encrypted email systems. But the crux of the matter is emails sent and *not* sent - both the cases, not one or the other.
Now let us see why they missed the point; and in a series of articles further explore
The emails were in fact sent (and not sent) from anonymous IDs (false, pseudo-IDs, or nom-de-plumes or assumed names). Both Petraeus and Broadwell used a joint Gmail ID - an assumed ID for which both knew the password.
Another point is using an anonymous or fake ID for stalking emails will have the opposite effect.
Just think: An accusatory email from a person known to you will lead to confrontation and back-off warning, at first. An accusatory email from an unknown person will straight away spark a police complaint. So use of temporary email IDs was not the solution; in any case Paula (and David) did use a variation of it.
Encrypted email system:
Come on! What is the point of sending an ‘encrypted’ stalking email? Whether she sent it from a real or a created-on-the-fly ID, what is the point of warning person if she can’t understand the gibberish?
Encryption could only have secured the draft messages Paula and David left for each other, but that was not how they were found out in the first place. Even here, encryption would have only stopped FBI from reading the love-chats, not hid that Paula and David are the ones logging into the particular Gmail a/c.
Once that fact came to light, encryption or no-encryption, FBI is going to question them directly. What are they going to do? Lie to the FBI?
(image courtesy The Cagle Post, 12 Nov 2012)
Goodness knows how many more people are going to be sucked in, tarnished and their family members embarrassed or shamed.
But that is not the point of this post. Washington Post ran ‘What Petraeus and Broadwell could have used instead of Gmail’ to protect their secrets. Which gave me the idea.
You see the Washington Post blog (and the earlier Foreign Policy article) both talk of alternate email systems to Gmail. Both have missed the nuance of the text (no pun intended) [http://killerapps.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/11/12/should_our_top_spies_be_using_gmail].
Their thrust is using anonymous or temporary email IDs and encrypted email systems. But the crux of the matter is emails sent and *not* sent - both the cases, not one or the other.
Now let us see why they missed the point; and in a series of articles further explore
- how they were found out;
- how they could have secured it further; and
- how they (especially Broadwell) could have escaped detection.
The emails were in fact sent (and not sent) from anonymous IDs (false, pseudo-IDs, or nom-de-plumes or assumed names). Both Petraeus and Broadwell used a joint Gmail ID - an assumed ID for which both knew the password.
Another point is using an anonymous or fake ID for stalking emails will have the opposite effect.
Just think: An accusatory email from a person known to you will lead to confrontation and back-off warning, at first. An accusatory email from an unknown person will straight away spark a police complaint. So use of temporary email IDs was not the solution; in any case Paula (and David) did use a variation of it.
Encrypted email system:
Come on! What is the point of sending an ‘encrypted’ stalking email? Whether she sent it from a real or a created-on-the-fly ID, what is the point of warning person if she can’t understand the gibberish?
Encryption could only have secured the draft messages Paula and David left for each other, but that was not how they were found out in the first place. Even here, encryption would have only stopped FBI from reading the love-chats, not hid that Paula and David are the ones logging into the particular Gmail a/c.
Once that fact came to light, encryption or no-encryption, FBI is going to question them directly. What are they going to do? Lie to the FBI?
***
That part cleared up, we will examine how the General and Paula could have got away with it - even with Paula sending Kelley those back-off emails. For that we have to re-construct how the FBI possibly zeroed in on Paula.
(image courtesy The Cagle Post, 12 Nov 2012)
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