Mainstream media now openly admits the FBI and CIA are reading all your emails

Mainstream media now openly admits the FBI and CIA are reading all your emails

(NaturalNews)
For years, those of us who have tried to warn the American public that
Big Brother monitors all Internet users were demonized, vilified and
ridiculed.

Now, the mainstream media has proven us correct.

"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," ZDNet reported earlier this month. "That tin-foil hat really isn't going to help. Take it off, you look silly."

The Petraeus case

Where's the proof that the government has this capability?

You might recall a fellow by the name of (retired) Gen. David Petraeus. He's been in the news lately.

This
four-star general-turned-CIA chief just resigned his post after news
broke that he had engaged in an extra-marital affair with is biographer,
herself a West Point graduate and former Army officer.

What led to this shocking discovery was Petraeus' use, of all things, Google's online email service, Gmail.

According to federal law, mind you, authorities are not legally permitted to electronically snoop around in your email box.

"The
government can't just wander through your emails just because they'd
like to know what you're thinking or doing," Stewart Baker, a former
assistant secretary at the Homeland Security Department who's now in
private law practice, told The Associated Press. "But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people's emails."

Or, in the case of the CIA, if the agency wants to track a suspect ostensibly for "national security" purposes. Ditto the NSA.

The
wrangling of Petraeus' email account has certainly landed him in a
world of trouble, but his story has also, once again, ignited a new the
debate over when, how and why governments and law enforcement agencies
alike are able to access the email accounts of ordinary citizens - even if they head up the most powerful spy agency in the world.

Granted, experts say "the little people" needn't worry much about having their online presence tracked. Agencies like the CIA
generally tend to have bigger fish to fry, so to speak. But
nevertheless, the technology to pilfer email accounts at will obviously
exists.

"Forget ECHELON, or signals intelligence, or the
interception of communications by black boxes installed covertly in data
centers," writes Zack Whittaker for ZDNet. "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."

(Editor's
Note: ECHELON, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is the name of "a
global Communications Interception (COMINT) system created by the United
States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to
routinely and indiscriminately monitor and record all forms of
electronic communications worldwide (both military and civilian) and
overseen by the National Security Agency," according to one published
description of the program.)

How the top CIA official got busted

When
he set up his private Gmail account, Petraeus used a pseudonym and
composed email messages but never sent them. They were instead saved as
drafts. His lover, Paula Broadwell, would then log in under the same
account, read the drafts then reply to them in the same manner - as a
draft, without actually sending the message.

The exchanges would
not be sent across the networks through Google's data centers, which
would make it nearly impossible for the NSA or any other ELINT
(electronic intelligence) agency (like Britain's GCHQ or the Israeli
Mossad) to "read" the messages while they are in transit between
accounts.

Other sinister operators - terrorists, pedophiles and the like - have been known to use the same trick to avoid detection, ZDNet reported.

"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," the report said.

In the end, the FBI used a little-know law called the Stored Communications Act, which is part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act,
as the basis for getting a warrant to view Petraeus' private Gmail
account. And that's how agents found the stored messages that were never
actually sent.

"Once it knew Ms. Broadwell was the sender of the
threatening messages, the FBI got a warrant that gave it covert access
to the anonymous email account," the BBC's Mark Ward reported.

Source:-

http://www.naturalnews.com/038020_FBI_surveillance_emails.html#ixzz2CeoPzJUC

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