Why Private Email Accounts are a National Security Issue

Private e-mail services like Google’s, though considered significantly more secure than most, still have susceptibilities to foreign intrusion. And it happens. Technology writers have sometimes discussed what one writer called the “password fallacy,” the false sense of safety created by access systems such as Google’s that balance security against ease of use. Even with Google’s extra security features, the company must also avoid making security so onerous as to drive away customers, making it an easier target for foreign hackers even before Petraeus possibly started sharing access and thus diluting the account’s integrity. And, as a Wired magazine investigation demonstrated in August, personal e-mail accounts often allow hackers access to other personal accounts, worsening both the infiltration and the damage.

All of this might sound a little overly apprehensive – really, U.S. national security is compromised because the CIA director’s personal Gmail account might have been a little easier to hack? – until you start looking at the scale and sophistication of foreign attempts to infiltrate U.S. data sources. Chinese hacking efforts, perhaps the best-known but nowhere near the only threat to U.S. networks and computers, suggest the enormous scope and ferocious drive of foreign government hackers.

Some Americans who have access to sensitive information and who travel to China describe going to tremendous lengths to minimize government efforts to seize their data. Some copy and paste their passwords from USB thumb drives rather than type them out, for fear of key-logging software. They carry “loaner” laptops and cellphones and pull out cellphone batteries during sensitive meetings, worried that the microphone could be switched on remotely. The New York Times called such extreme measures, which also apply in other countries, “standard operating procedure for officials at American government agencies.”

by Max Fisher, Washington Post |  Read more:

Image: Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images)