Dismissal of CIA Chief David Petraeus Reveals

¶ … dismissal of CIA chief David Petraeus reveals much about the security of our nations electronic communication. Essentially if the person in charge of an extremely secretive government organization can be compromised through lax information security, than there may be larger problems on the horizon. Claburn, (2012) looked at this example in his article " The Petraeus Affair: Surveillance State Stopper." The purpose of this essay is to evaluate this article and make a qualitative assessment on the material it presented. Furthermore, I will comment on the usefulness, validity and appropriateness of the article to complete my argument.

Claburn introduced an interesting argument supposing that the recent Petreaus scandal may have caused. The article documented the email exchanges between his mistress, Paula Broadwell, and another mistress Jill Kelly. Gmail was used as the email transporter in this case and unknown to any party perhaps, Gmail has the ability to track IP addresses. Claburn documented that between 20,000 to 30,000 pages of inappropriate material were exchanged throughout this scandalous event.

Eventually the author described how Petraeus' career had unraveled and had been brought down by the FBI even though no criminal activity had been witnessed. He continued to suggest that the privacy of these individuals had been clearly violated as FBI agents appeared to be snooping when no criminal activity was present. Ultimately he concludes the article by stating "Now that it's clear government officials stand as naked before online investigators as lowly citizens, maybe we'll see privacy exhumed from its grave, embalmed, and propped up as if it were alive and well again."

The article itself is succinct and direct while presenting a solid argument. Basically Claburn is questioning the power of federal agencies involvement in the personal information exchanges of people. He wants to know where the line should be drawn, and I must agree with him. Information can be used in many different ways, for good and for bad purposes and it is difficult to hold one responsible for the relative use of that information.

The FBI's access to an important individual like Petraeus suggests a few problems for me. First, the CIA's director is not very up-to-date on the power that companies like Google have in the information security realm. It appears that Google has more direct power than the CIA, or Petraeus was deliberately taken out for political reasons. The next problem is that the FBI will use its political power through the information security channels that have been developing over the past decade through the growth of the internet and technological advances.