Good luck with your dad, sarameg.

I did!

And thank goodness for that! No, wait, I mean the other thing.

CIA officers, much less the head of the CIA are not supposed to be using gmail either. Huge groups of hackers are trying to find any way into US computer systems and often find an opening through gmail and other mail services.

That Petraeus opened up the US to hacker threat is probably the biggest reason why he *needed* to resign.

CIA officers, much less the head of the CIA are not supposed to be using gmail either.

Have we learned nothing from the hacking of Sarah Palin's Yahoo mail account?

Seriously, people. No dirty texts, no emails. It's like no one knows how to have a secret affair.

So, on twitter I was having an exchange with some reporters who verified what I knew about some forms of secure communication:

if you create drafts in an email account, delete the draft and the compose another draft, that can be a secure-ish form of communication. It seems that the journalists think this is what Petraeus was doing with his biographer. Problem is this was P4's personal acct, and so other email messages were there, or at least the addys were in his address book, and so Broadwell had access to them and emailed threats to P4's friend.

I don't see how it can be secure unless you assume that Google's servers are secure, though. Even if the message never leaves the server itself.

Well, if you encrypt the content in gmail, and obfuscate the IPs you access it with, you buy yourself a bit of wiggle room--the government will get you, and so will Anonymous, but journos might not.

Dude, I am not a spy or a hacker and there's no FUCKING way as a NORMAL person I would have an affair through Gmail. If I was to have an affair, which I wouldn't as the DAMNED HEAD OF THE CIA.

Or, as, yanno, ME. Because if I wanted to fuck someone else so damn badly, I would discuss it with my damned partner.

Maybe I should apply to be an CIA bigwig: "Hi, I'm not in super great shape and I'm 40 but I'm NOT A FUCKING MORON WITH MY LADYBITS! Unblackmailable because I anything I'd done in my personal life, I don't give a flipping fuck who knows it! Plus I'm really smart, but I need to work flexible hours, can stay up 36 to 48 hours no prob, and want a standing RX to Ambien so I can sleep when I'm done! KTHXX!"

there's no FUCKING way as a NORMAL person I would have an affair through Gmail

But tons of normal people would, and a few techies ones would too, with obfuscation layers thrown in. It's certainly got its points over anything involving a phone.

How would you communicate?

I mean, I guess if you're the head of the CIA, you know about burner phones, but that seems like a huge hassle.