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http://www.zdnet.com/yes-the-fbi-and-cia-can-read-your-email-heres-how-7000007319/?s_cid=e550
http://www.zdnet.com/yes-the-fbi-and-cia-can-read-your-email-heres-how-7000007319/?s_cid=e550
Yes, the FBI and CIA can read your email. Here's how
Summary: "Petraeus-gate," some U.S. pundits are calling it. How significant is it that even the head of the CIA can have his emails read by an albeit friendly domestic intelligence agency, which can lead to his resignation and global, and very public humiliation? Here's how.
By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | November 13, 2012 -- 22:00 GMT (14:00 PST)
The U.S. government -- and likely your own government, for that matter -- is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques, or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary -- sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without.
Read more
ZDNet: Politics, tech, and sausage-making: big data, big mistakes, and General indiscretion
CNET: Petraeus reportedly used draft e-mails to converse with mistress
SmartPlanet: Why nothing is private: How the FBI can read your emails
That tin-foil hat really isn't going to help. Take it off, you look silly.
Gen. David Petraeus, the former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, resigned over the weekend after he was found to have engaged in an extra-marital affair. What caught Petraeus out was, of all things, his usage of Google's online email service, Gmail.
This has not only landed the former CIA chief in hot water but has ignited the debate over how, when, and why governments and law enforcement agencies are able to access ordinary citizens' email accounts, even if they are the head of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world.
If it makes you feel any better, the chances are small that your own or a foreign government will snoop on you. The odds are much greater -- at least for the ordinary person (terrorists, hijackers et al: take note) -- that your email account will be broken into by a stranger exploiting your weak password, or an ex-lover with a grudge (see "Fatal Attraction").
Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data centers. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies can access -- thanks to the shift towards Web-based email services in the cloud -- but it's not as exciting or as Jack Bauer-esque as one may think or hope for.
The easiest way to access almost anybody's email nowadays is still through the courts. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's true.)
The 'save as draft' trick
Petraeus set up a private account under a pseudonym and composed email messages but never sent them. Instead, they were saved in draft. His lover, Paula Broadwell, would log in under the same account, read the email and reply, all without sending anything. The traffic would not be sent across the networks through Google's data centers, making it nigh on impossible for the National Security Agency or any other electronic signals eavesdropping agency (such as Britain's elusive GCHQ) to 'read' the traffic while it is in transit.
Saving an email as a draft almost entirely eliminates network traffic, making it nigh on impossible for intelligence agencies to 'traffic sniff.'
And yes, terrorists and pedophiles have been known to use this 'trick', but also sophisticated criminals also use this technique. It eliminates a network trail to a greater or lesser extent, and makes it more difficult to trace.
But surely IP addresses are logged and noted? When emails are sent and received, yes. But the emails were saved in draft and therefore were not sent. However, Google may still have a record of the IP addresses of those who logged into the account.
However, most Internet or broadband providers offer dynamic IP addresses that change over time, and an IP address does not always point to the same computer, let alone the same region or state every time it is assigned to a user. Even then, recent U.S. court cases have found that IP addresses do not specifically point to a computer, meaning even if the authorities were sure that it was Petraeus, for instance -- though IP addresses very rarely give the exact house number and street address -- it would not stick in court.
As is often the case, human error can land someone in the legal spotlight. 37-year-old Florida resident Jill Kelley, a family friend to the Petraeus', allegedly received emails from an anonymous account warning Kelley to stay away from the CIA chief.
But when Broadwell sent these messages, it left behind little fragments of data attached to the email -- every email you send has this data attached -- which first led the FBI on a path that led up to the very door of Petraeus' office door in Langley, Virginia.
Get a warrant, serve it to Google?
There's no such thing as a truly 'anonymous' email account, and no matter how much you try to encrypt the contents of the email you are sending, little fragments of data are attached by email servers and messaging companies. It's how email works and it's entirely unavoidable.
Every email sent and receive comes with 'communications data,' otherwise known as "metadata" -- little fragments of information that carries the recipient and the sender's address, and routing data such as the IP addresses of the sender and the servers or data center that it's passed through. Extracting this metadata is not a mystery or difficult, in fact anyone can do it, but if you have the legal tools and law enforcement power to determine where the email was passed through -- such as an IP address of one of Google's data center in the United States.
Email is surprisingly similar to the postal system, especially when it comes to the communication "metadata."
The system is remarkably similar to the postal system. You can seal the envelope and hide what's inside, but it contains a postmark of where it came from and where it's going. It may even have your fingerprints on it. All of this information outside the contents is "metadata."
http://www.zdnet.com/yes-the-fbi-and-cia-can-read-your-email-heres-how-7000007319/?s_cid=e550
Yes, the FBI and CIA can read your email. Here's how
Summary: "Petraeus-gate," some U.S. pundits are calling it. How significant is it that even the head of the CIA can have his emails read by an albeit friendly domestic intelligence agency, which can lead to his resignation and global, and very public humiliation? Here's how.
By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | November 13, 2012 -- 22:00 GMT (14:00 PST)
The U.S. government -- and likely your own government, for that matter -- is either watching your online activity every minute of the day through automated methods and non-human eavesdropping techniques, or has the ability to dip in as and when it deems necessary -- sometimes with a warrant, sometimes without.
Read more
ZDNet: Politics, tech, and sausage-making: big data, big mistakes, and General indiscretion
CNET: Petraeus reportedly used draft e-mails to converse with mistress
SmartPlanet: Why nothing is private: How the FBI can read your emails
That tin-foil hat really isn't going to help. Take it off, you look silly.
Gen. David Petraeus, the former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, resigned over the weekend after he was found to have engaged in an extra-marital affair. What caught Petraeus out was, of all things, his usage of Google's online email service, Gmail.
This has not only landed the former CIA chief in hot water but has ignited the debate over how, when, and why governments and law enforcement agencies are able to access ordinary citizens' email accounts, even if they are the head of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world.
If it makes you feel any better, the chances are small that your own or a foreign government will snoop on you. The odds are much greater -- at least for the ordinary person (terrorists, hijackers et al: take note) -- that your email account will be broken into by a stranger exploiting your weak password, or an ex-lover with a grudge (see "Fatal Attraction").
Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data centers. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement bodies can access -- thanks to the shift towards Web-based email services in the cloud -- but it's not as exciting or as Jack Bauer-esque as one may think or hope for.
The easiest way to access almost anybody's email nowadays is still through the courts. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's true.)
The 'save as draft' trick
Petraeus set up a private account under a pseudonym and composed email messages but never sent them. Instead, they were saved in draft. His lover, Paula Broadwell, would log in under the same account, read the email and reply, all without sending anything. The traffic would not be sent across the networks through Google's data centers, making it nigh on impossible for the National Security Agency or any other electronic signals eavesdropping agency (such as Britain's elusive GCHQ) to 'read' the traffic while it is in transit.
Saving an email as a draft almost entirely eliminates network traffic, making it nigh on impossible for intelligence agencies to 'traffic sniff.'
And yes, terrorists and pedophiles have been known to use this 'trick', but also sophisticated criminals also use this technique. It eliminates a network trail to a greater or lesser extent, and makes it more difficult to trace.
But surely IP addresses are logged and noted? When emails are sent and received, yes. But the emails were saved in draft and therefore were not sent. However, Google may still have a record of the IP addresses of those who logged into the account.
However, most Internet or broadband providers offer dynamic IP addresses that change over time, and an IP address does not always point to the same computer, let alone the same region or state every time it is assigned to a user. Even then, recent U.S. court cases have found that IP addresses do not specifically point to a computer, meaning even if the authorities were sure that it was Petraeus, for instance -- though IP addresses very rarely give the exact house number and street address -- it would not stick in court.
As is often the case, human error can land someone in the legal spotlight. 37-year-old Florida resident Jill Kelley, a family friend to the Petraeus', allegedly received emails from an anonymous account warning Kelley to stay away from the CIA chief.
But when Broadwell sent these messages, it left behind little fragments of data attached to the email -- every email you send has this data attached -- which first led the FBI on a path that led up to the very door of Petraeus' office door in Langley, Virginia.
Get a warrant, serve it to Google?
There's no such thing as a truly 'anonymous' email account, and no matter how much you try to encrypt the contents of the email you are sending, little fragments of data are attached by email servers and messaging companies. It's how email works and it's entirely unavoidable.
Every email sent and receive comes with 'communications data,' otherwise known as "metadata" -- little fragments of information that carries the recipient and the sender's address, and routing data such as the IP addresses of the sender and the servers or data center that it's passed through. Extracting this metadata is not a mystery or difficult, in fact anyone can do it, but if you have the legal tools and law enforcement power to determine where the email was passed through -- such as an IP address of one of Google's data center in the United States.
Email is surprisingly similar to the postal system, especially when it comes to the communication "metadata."
The system is remarkably similar to the postal system. You can seal the envelope and hide what's inside, but it contains a postmark of where it came from and where it's going. It may even have your fingerprints on it. All of this information outside the contents is "metadata."
