Here’s the e-mail trick Petraeus and Broadwell used to communicate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/?hpid=z2

by danso • 14 years ago

52 52 14 years ago

washingtonpost.com

mrinterweb• 14 years ago

I guess I am unclear why their affair would warent Petraeus's resignation. People have affairs. Was there a significant conflict of interest regarding their affair? If not, I don't understand how this is news worthy?

aneth42• 14 years ago

Secret affairs, or any other secret potentially embarrassing personal or sexual traits, are easy fodder for blackmail. People are irrational when it comes to such things.

Anyone in such a position needs to basically have no personal secrets that would cause major harm if revealed.

ketralnis3• 14 years ago

Looks like he doesn't anymore.

aaronbrethorst• 14 years ago

    Days after Petraeus' resignation stunned Washington,
    information continues to emerge. Among other things, a
    video has surfaced of a speech by Petraeus' paramour in
    which she suggested the Libya attack was targeting a
    secret prison at the Benghazi consulate annex, raising
    unverified concerns about possible security leaks.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/12/us/petraeus-cia-resignation/in...

The affair by itself should've had no impact. In fact, you can find tons of articles from today that talk about how Petraeus had every intention of staying on the job. However, once you get into the realm of 'what classified information did he spill in pillow talk?', then resignation seems like the least he should have to do.

Broadwell is lawyering up[1], and I bet that Petraeus does the same in the next days or weeks. There are going to be some serious criminal liability issues over improperly disclosed national security information.

[1] http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/paula_broadwell_lawye...

ketralnis3• 14 years ago

> However, once you get into the realm of 'what classified information did he spill in pillow talk?', then resignation seems like the least he should have to do

Then should we keep intelligence folk from ever dating or marrying anyone ever? I don't see how this is any different

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

If you look at the history of espionage going back n thousand years you'll see plenty of cases where people have been blackmailed, extorted, or otherwise compromised through illicit romantic affairs.

It may not be such a big deal if you're a four-star general but it's a very big deal in the intelligence community. If this sort of thing was tolerated at the top level of the CIA, the agency would have no moral authority to enforce the rules among the rank-and-file cloak-and-dagger types.

OTOH if he had reported the affair(s) in question as he was supposed to do, there might have been some room for negotiation. It's not so much the affair, but the cover-up.

zerostar073• 14 years ago

Not really thousand years, not many (any?) historical cases where extramarital affair was a cause for blackmail or extortion.

k3n• 14 years ago

I think it's been said that having an affair is expressly prohibited in his line of work (given the factors laid out by others here).

He broke a really big rule. When you're in such a high position, you don't get to break big rules and then get off scott-free; rather, you will either be dismissed in a dishonorable fashion, or you can resign and save a little bit of that honor.

If he had tried to ride it out, it would've created an even greater distraction in the news, drawing even more unwanted attention onto his office and that of his superior, and superiors don't like negative attention. After all of that, he _still_ would have been let go. Get out early and save face.

onetwothreefour• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure a certain president was impeached for similar issues...

aneth42• 14 years ago

Seems like it would have be safer and harder to detect if they used a private pastebin or some similar obscure scratchpad service.

That is essentially what they are doing, except in something that is somewhat easier to link to their identity.

Perhaps:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Anonymous-PasteBin-AnonPaste-Peo...

Though that might raise some eyebrows.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

You would have thought that they guy leading the freaking CIA would have a little more insight to how stupid-easy it would be to get that information out of Google, since they likely do it so regularly[1] in their terrorist hunts.

Further, you'd think he would be versed in better technologies (like encryption and/or anonymous services). What makes it hard to follow up on terrorists? Do that.

He obviously thought hiding things was important, so I can't fathom why he didn't take the security seriously.

1. Or maybe it shows they don't interact much with the like of Google, but I doubt it.

vidarh• 14 years ago

He obviously thought obscuring things somewhat was important.

There are always extra step we can take to be more secure. We tend to hold back because security is extra effort and our best measures are rarely worth the hassle when compared with the consequences of disclosure.

Presumably he did not expect that there would be an FBI probe, and so didn't see a need to go through more hassle.

daliusd2• 14 years ago

I have not followed this story but I guess he was hiding from wife not from security services. Actually I'm not even sure how entering private life is justified in this situation. I can imagine speculations about leaking sensitive information and etc. but you need proof for that. I'm not saying that his private behaviour is good and I understand that as public influential person he basically does not have private life but that just shows that security services has nothing better to do...

pyre• 14 years ago

It's a security breach in that it opens him up to blackmail.

shawn-butler2• 14 years ago

It's complicated by the fact he is a military officer. Adultery especially by officers is seen as unbecoming conduct and a threat to military discipline.

shin_lao• 14 years ago

His lover has been found with confidential information. It is possible he may have leaked sensitive information.

john61• 14 years ago

Security through obscurity never worked.

Baffling that an CIA man does not know this.

ceejayoz4• 14 years ago

> Security through obscurity never worked.

It works all the time for people having affairs. You're typically hiding from your spouse, not the CIA/FBI.

illuminate3• 14 years ago

"It works all the time for people having affairs"

It rarely works ~well~ considering all the times that they're caught due to the extreme amount of suspicion their actions generate.

FireBeyond2• 14 years ago

It works a lot less for the head of an intelligence agency, a political appointee, during an election season.

SkyMarshal• 14 years ago

>Security through obscurity never worked.

In order to know this for a fact you would need to know all the instances it was tried, and that every single one of them failed.

Somehow I doubt you know that, and are just repeating an operating system platitude as if it applies everywhere.

ForFreedom• 14 years ago

So whats the big deal?

Groxx3• 14 years ago

In the bottom right of your Gmail settings:

  Last account activity: 48 minutes ago
  Details

Yeeeep. Real secure. One peek gives you every IP address involved. Well, you can get around it with TOR, but that has its own problems.

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

Wow, never saw that! Thanks! :).

Groxx3• 14 years ago

They're pretty good about notifying you if someone signs on from a significantly different IP address. I've had it pop up after most flights to new locations - my next visit back home (or after some time) will ask me if visit X was me, and tell me to change my password if it wasn't.

Xcelerate• 14 years ago

> Well, you can get around it with TOR, but that has its own problems.

I'm curious. What are the problems with TOR?

rmc• 14 years ago

People who control the exit nodes could potentially see all your traffic.

Large intelligence agencies may have lots of honeypot tor nodes, you might get one of them

mikle• 14 years ago

There are some problems with TOR (Some have solution):

1. Someone with enough resources can create and add to the network enough servers, especially entrance and exit nodes, to effectively nullify the TOR router.

2. Some web tools can have side channel attacks that break out of TOR and use the internet to get a specific resource.

3. Another popular side channel attack is fingerprinting the browser, best demonstrated by the EFF here: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

4. TOR itself might have a bug or a backdoor, although this is getting a bit into the realm of conspiracy.

This is of the top of my head, but I'm sure I missed some.

Groxx3• 14 years ago

My main reason: actively and repeatedly using TOR when you're a relatively high-profile military person will likely raise eyebrows, maybe even focused effort to figure out why. There are many ways to get information out of computers - taking over their account and checking their activity is probably one of the harder ones.

Other than that, you have to be very careful to use it correctly without revealing who you are, and all TOR would do in this case is (essentially) randomize your IP address. If e.g. you're consistent with using TOR for gmail and there's a time that doesn't correspond to your TOR activity, it's basically a guarantee that someone else accesses the account, though you haven't found out who.

imrehg• 14 years ago

[tangential] I don't know, this whole story just keeps reminding me of the ending of Burn After Reading... Keep imagining the CIA director as J.K. Simmons... http://youtu.be/46h7oP9eiBk "So what did we learn?"

sneak• 14 years ago

It's even more funny to re-watch Burn After Reading after having played Portal 2, as J.K. Simmons voiced the character Cave Johnson.

patio11• 14 years ago

So to make this a little more HN-y, there exists the possibility that two users were just using software in a counterintuitive and unplanned for fashion for whatever reason makes sense to them as users. It happens all the time.

Ask me how many shopping lists are in Bingo Card Creator ("I like it because I can write them at school and then pull them up on my iPhone!") or about Appointment Reminder users who use the appointment schedule as I-can't-believe-its-not-Google-Calendar in between their actual appointments. (Quick SQL suggests there are over sixty AR customers who have no-contact-info-included calendar entries which don't appear to represent actual people/appointments, like "class", "doctor", "soccer practice", etc.)

Or more broadly, have you ever seen:

+ Wordpress drafts used as a company internal knowledgebase?

+ TI calculator programs used as notepads?

+ Video games used as photo sharing communities? (Long story short: it is called Flickr.)

etc, etc, etc

orangethirty• 14 years ago

I have a little paste bin clone running on the web for my family and friends to use (testing it before release as OSS). It allows for file uploads, and text/link storage. One day noticed someone was linking from one paste to another. Strange. Why would anyone save a link they have access to? Turns out they did not have access to Powerpoint and were using the program as an online presentation tool. It was quite clever. They would upload a file, writhe the caption under it in the comments box, then insert the link for the next item in the presentation. I would have never guessed someone could use it for such a thing. Went ahead and asked them about it, and they said the loved that feature... :)

darklajid• 14 years ago

I don't quite see the point of this article.

So, someone had an affair and used GMail drafts for sexting / communicating with his lover?

How on earth can you insert the word 'terrorist' into that already borderline 'And the prince of ... has an new girlfriend' level article? [1] Really, what's the connection? Terrorists might use that as well? They eat bread as well, I guess. And maybe ride a bike from time to time.

1: I agree that it might be (?) interesting if the head of the CIA is potentially making himself vulnerable to blackmail, or if he's sharing secret stuff with his lover-at-that-time. But the article is low on anything of value?

Here’s the e-mail trick Petraeus and Broadwell used to communicate

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