{"id":1215,"date":"2012-11-21T21:26:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T21:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=1215"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:05","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:05","slug":"email-privacy-at-the-center-of-petraeus-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/email-privacy-at-the-center-of-petraeus-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Email Privacy at the Center of Petraeus Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, November 18, 2012, by Anu Madan
\nOn November 9, 2012, the world watched in shock as decorated four-star Army general, David Petraeus, resigned from his post as the Director of the CIA, after confessing his extra-marital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
\nWhat led to these astounding events? As if right out of a soap opera, this scandal commenced when Jill Kelly, a Tampa socialite, started receiving harassing emails<\/a> from an anonymous sender.\u00a0 After sharing her concerns with a friend in the FBI, federal investigators traced the messages to Broadwell.<\/a>\u00a0 In an attempt to find the source of the harassing emails, investigators discovered sexually explicit emails that Petraeus and Broadwell had been exchanging<\/a>.\u00a0
\nAlthough the two took some precautions to shield their identity and keep their illicit communications a secret, it wasn’t enough.\u00a0 Despite using pseudonyms to set up separate Gmail accounts<\/a>, they made the careless mistake of not deleting their emails and drafts.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/a>\u00a0
\nWhat this scandal reveals is that no one, not even the Director of the CIA, can hide behind a computer screen.\u00a0 In a recent article, the ACLU asked: When the CIA director cannot hide his activities online, what hope is there for the rest of us?<\/a> \u00a0Not many, it would seem.\u00a0 Unlike letters stashed under a mattress, email communications are very difficult to conceal.\u00a0 Efforts to hide communications trails have proved futile.\u00a0 In an attempt to communicate discretely, Petraeus and Broadwell also reportedly opened a shared Gmail account<\/a>, where they stored their sexually explicit messages in the draft folder, instead of transmitting them. \u00a0Law enforcement authorities are well aware of this technique, which, appeared in federal court documents<\/a> nearly a decade ago.\u00a0
\nAccording to the ACLU, by “storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, individuals may be making it even easier for the government to intercept their communications<\/a>.”\u00a0 In previous cases, the Justice Department stated that because draft emails are not in “electronic storage<\/a>,” police could access them without obtaining a search warrant from a judge. The Justice Department claims it only needs a subpoena<\/a> to access the draft emails.\u00a0
\nIt seems that Department of Justice has the statutory support to make that argument.\u00a0 The Electronic Communications Privacy Act<\/a> (ECPA), which was last updated in 1986, currently governs digital communications.\u00a0 The ECPA contains a provision<\/a> that permits authorities to access email messages more than six months old without a warrant.\u00a0 Furthermore,
\n“courts have not required police to notify account holders<\/a>” when they monitor their email accounts.\u00a0 According to at least one federal district judge<\/a>, informing Internet and Web email providers is sufficient under the ECPA and is constitutionally valid under the Fourth Amendment.
\nTwo months ago, Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced a privacy bill<\/a> backed by a coalition of corporate members<\/a> (including Amazon.com, Google, and Apple, to name a few) that would require authorities to obtain a search warrant to access private digital communications.\u00a0 Though the “ECPA 2.0 Act of 2012” has been deemed a “superb piece of legislation that would ensure Fourth Amendment protections remain meaningful in the information age<\/a>,” it will face strong opposition from the Department of Justice and other law enforcement groups.
\nE-mail communication was at the heart of the Petraeus scandal.\u00a0 Perhaps it is time that we modernize our privacy laws so we can keep our most confidential communications, confidential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, November 18, 2012, by Anu Madan On November 9, 2012, the world watched in shock as decorated four-star Army general, David Petraeus, resigned from his post as the Director of the CIA, after confessing his extra-marital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. What led to these astounding events? As if right out of a …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7658,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions\/7658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}