The real outrage in the Petraeus scandal? The surveillance state.

[Direckshun]

Just to recap the facts as we know them:

1. Some person receives a mild cyberthreat.

2. She happens to know someone in the FBI, so the FBI agent, who's clearly got a thing for her, spearheads an investigation.

3. The FBI finds the cyberthreats to be quite mild.

4. Nevertheless, they forge forward to attempt to identify who the sender may be.

5. Ms. Broadwell (the chick Petraeus banged) pops as a suspect. A suspect of a mild cyberthreat that wasn't against any crime.

6. Without any warrant whatsoever, or approval from any judge whatsoever, the FBI hacks all of Broadwell's email accounts and read all her emails.

7. They discover sexually explicit emails from somebody.

8. They investigate the sexually explicit emails, and ascertain that they came from Petraeus.

9. Profit.

That's it.

That's what happened. This all happened because the FBI devoted extensive resources for a personal favor, and with no crime, no warrant, and no judicial approval.

Simple question: is this right? Should this be happening?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ance-state-fbi

FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday 13 November 2012 09.46 EST

The Petraeus scandal is receiving intense media scrutiny obviously due to its salacious aspects, leaving one, as always, to fantasize about what a stellar press corps we would have if they devoted a tiny fraction of this energy to dissecting non-sex political scandals. Nonetheless, several of the emerging revelations are genuinely valuable, particularly those involving the conduct of the FBI and the reach of the US surveillance state.

As is now widely reported, the FBI investigation began when Jill Kelley - a Tampa socialite friendly with Petraeus (and apparently very friendly with Gen. John Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan) - received a half-dozen or so anonymous emails that she found vaguely threatening. She then informed a friend of hers who was an FBI agent, and a major FBI investigation was then launched that set out to determine the identity of the anonymous emailer.

That is the first disturbing fact: it appears that the FBI not only devoted substantial resources, but also engaged in highly invasive surveillance, for no reason other than to do a personal favor for a friend of one of its agents, to find out who was very mildly harassing her by email. The emails Kelley received were, as the Daily Beast reports, quite banal and clearly not an event that warranted an FBI investigation:

"The emails that Jill Kelley showed an FBI friend near the start of last summer were not jealous lover warnings like 'stay away from my man', a knowledgeable source tells The Daily Beast. . . .

"'More like, 'Who do you think you are? . . .You parade around the base . . . You need to take it down a notch,'" according to the source, who was until recently at the highest levels of the intelligence community and prefers not to be identified by name.

"The source reports that the emails did make one reference to Gen. David Petraeus, but it was oblique and offered no manifest suggestion of a personal relationship or even that he was central to the sender's spite. . . .

"When the FBI friend showed the emails to the cyber squad in the Tampa field office, her fellow agents noted the absence of any overt threats.

"No, 'I'll kill you' or 'I'll burn your house down,'' the source says. 'It doesn't seem really that bad.'

"The squad was not even sure the case was worth pursuing, the source says.

"'What does this mean? There's no threat there. This is against the law?' the agents asked themselves by the source's account.

"At most the messages were harassing. The cyber squad had to consult the statute books in its effort to determine whether there was adequate legal cause to open a case.

"'It was a close call,' the source says.

"What tipped it may have been Kelley's friendship with the agent."

That this deeply personal motive was what spawned the FBI investigation is bolstered by the fact that the initial investigating agent "was barred from taking part in the case over the summer due to superiors' concerns that he was personally involved in the case" - indeed, "supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter" - and was found to have "allegedly sent shirtless photos" to Kelley, and "is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI".

[The New York Times this morning reports that the FBI claims the emails contained references to parts of Petraeus' schedule that were not publicly disclosed, though as Marcy Wheeler documents, the way the investigation proceeded strongly suggests that at least the initial impetus behind it was a desire to settle personal scores.]

What is most striking is how sweeping, probing and invasive the FBI's investigation then became, all without any evidence of any actual crime - or the need for any search warrant:

"Because the sender's account had been registered anonymously, investigators had to use forensic techniques - including a check of what other e-mail accounts had been accessed from the same computer address - to identify who was writing the e-mails.

"Eventually they identified Ms. Broadwell as a prime suspect and obtained access to her regular e-mail account. In its in-box, they discovered intimate and sexually explicit e-mails from another account that also was not immediately identifiable. Investigators eventually ascertained that it belonged to Mr. Petraeus and studied the possibility that someone had hacked into Mr. Petraeus's account or was posing as him to send the explicit messages."

So all based on a handful of rather unremarkable emails sent to a woman fortunate enough to have a friend at the FBI, the FBI traced all of Broadwell's physical locations, learned of all the accounts she uses, ended up reading all of her emails, investigated the identity of her anonymous lover (who turned out to be Petraeus), and then possibly read his emails as well. They dug around in all of this without any evidence of any real crime - at most, they had a case of "cyber-harassment" more benign than what regularly appears in my email inbox and that of countless of other people - and, in large part, without the need for any warrant from a court.

But that isn't all the FBI learned. It was revealed this morning that they also discovered "alleged inappropriate communication" to Kelley from Gen. Allen, who is not only the top commander in Afghanistan but was also just nominated by President Obama to be the Commander of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe (a nomination now "on hold"). Here, according to Reuters, is what the snooping FBI agents obtained about that [emphasis added]:

"The U.S. official said the FBI uncovered between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of communications - mostly emails spanning from 2010 to 2012 - between Allen and Jill Kelley . . . .

"Asked whether there was concern about the disclosure of classified information, the official said, on condition of anonymity: 'We are concerned about inappropriate communications. We are not going to speculate as to what is contained in these documents.'"

So not only did the FBI - again, all without any real evidence of a crime - trace the locations and identity of Broadwell and Petreaus, and read through Broadwell's emails (and possibly Petraeus'), but they also got their hands on and read through 20,000-30,000 pages of emails between Gen. Allen and Kelley.

This is a surveillance state run amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology companies.

But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation put it this morning: "Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?"

Having the career of the beloved CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but that he is an ardent civil libertarian.

The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment - monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series, reported: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."

[Donger]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

Kelley's isn't the source of concern in the OP.

Yes, and I still wouldn't call that surveillance. It was an investigation.

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by Donger

Yes, and I still wouldn't call that surveillance. It was an investigation.

I don't disagree, but like you should need a warrant to search my house if I'm a suspect, you should need a warrant or approval from a FISA judge to go through my inbox.

[Brock]

These guys were compromised. How it was found out doesn't bother me in the least.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

I don't disagree, but like you should need a warrant to search my house if I'm a suspect, you should need a warrant or approval from a FISA judge to go through my inbox.

sorry, doesn't work that way anymore. Thanks to the Patriot act.

[petegz28]

Funny, this is all over the news yet Benghazi was no where to be found. 4 people die in a terrorist attack? Meh. General cheats on his wife? STOP THE PRESSES!

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

sorry, doesn't work that way anymore. Thanks to the Patriot act.

Yup.

[WoodDraw]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

4th amendment.

Okai, but I mean where? What violated it?

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

I don't give a shit about the affair, actually.

I care about the abusive surveillance state that exposed it.

Yeah, it looks pretty ****ed up to me.

[Direckshun]

Originally Posted by WoodDraw

Okai, but I mean where? What violated it?

Unreasonable searches and seizures.

We have FISA judges and warrants to ensure that are designed to prevent these from occurring.

[WoodDraw]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

Unreasonable searches and seizures.

We have FISA judges and warrants to ensure that are designed to prevent these from occurring.

What was searched? What was seized? And how do we know it's illegal?

Isn't this all just conjecture at this point? Can't we save the outrage for a few days?

[banyon]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

Unreasonable searches and seizures.

We have FISA judges and warrants to ensure that are designed to prevent these from occurring.

Have to confess, i followed your links too and found nothing regarding search warrants or the absence thereof.

Plus, if these were military/cia accounts, they probably waived that either implicitly or explicitly long ago. There are several rulings,iirc, that you have a lessened/no expectation of privacy in your work account floating in the appellate circuit decisions.

[WoodDraw]

There's clearly some type of warrant here. They just searched her house, for god's sake. The question is timing, and when everyone knew what.

[banyon]

Originally Posted by WoodDraw

There's clearly some type of warrant here. They just searched her house, for god's sake. The question is timing, and when everyone knew what.

Oh, I just started reading about this. Did not know there was a home search, thought you guys were just talking emails.

If there was a home search, then either there was a warrant, or these were the dumbest FBI agents and us attorneys in history. I'm betting the former.

[WoodDraw]

Originally Posted by banyon

Oh, I just started reading about this. Did not know there was a home search, thought you guys were just talking emails.

If there was a home search, then either there was a warrant, or these were the dumbest FBI agents and us attorneys in history. I'm betting the former.

To be fair, I could be wrong. I'm just reading as well. Just read this in the WP:

Law enforcement officials offered conflicting accounts of the significance of the FBI’s seizure of materials from Broadwell’s home. Officials said Broadwell provided access to the residence, which the FBI requested on Sunday, and turned over computers, files and other material. She was not present when the search occurred over several hours Monday night

So perhaps all involved are cooperating without involving the courts. I can't imagine any lawyer in the world advising a client to allow a search without a warrant, but who knows. I'm not sure anyone really knows.

[edit]

But the NYT:

Law enforcement officials have said they used only ordinary methods in the case, which might have included grand jury subpoenas and search warrants. As the complainant, Ms. Kelley presumably granted F.B.I. specialists access to her computer, which they would have needed in their hunt for clues to the identity of the sender of the anonymous e-mails. While they were looking, they discovered General Allen’s e-mails, which F.B.I. superiors found “potentially inappropriate” and decided should be shared with the Defense Department.

In a parallel process, the investigators gained access, probably using a search warrant, to Ms. Broadwell’s Gmail account. There they found messages that turned out to be from Mr. Petraeus.

Quite a bit of speculation all the way around.

[T-post Tom]

The love-sick FBI agent would be interesting fodder for a made-for-tv movie. The shirtless pics... contacting Republicans in the Congress after he was removed from the case...you can't make this stuff up.