WASHINGTON -- The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus shows how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed.



Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor -- not a judge -- to obtain electronic messages that are 6 months old or older.


Public interest groups are pressing Congress for the law to be updated because it was written a quarter-century ago when most emails were deleted after a few months because the cost of storing them indefinitely was prohibitive. Now, "cloud computing" services provide huge amounts of inexpensive storage capacity.



Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has proposed changing the law to require a warrant for all Internet communications regardless of their age.




A Gmail account figured prominently in the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' resignation last week as the nation's spy chief. Petraeus, a retired Army general, stepped down after he confessed to an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and his biographer.

The inquiry began this year after Jill Kelley, a Tampa, Fla., socialite who was friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, began receiving harassing emails. Tampa is where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located. Petraeus served as commander at Central Command from 2008 to 2010.

FBI agents traced the emails to Broadwell, according to two federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sources were not authorized to speak about the matter on the record.

As they looked further, FBI agents found a private Gmail account that used an alias name. The account turned out to belong to Petraeus.

The contents of several of the exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell suggested they were having an affair, according to the officials. Investigators determined that no security breach had occurred but continued their investigation into whether Petraeus had a role in the harassing emails that Broadwell had sent to Kelley, which was a criminal investigation.


One of the law enforcement officials said they did not transmit all of their communications as emails from one's inbox to the other's. Rather, they composed them in a Gmail account and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox." Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail which is easier to trace.

It's a technique that al-Qaida terrorists began using several years ago and teen-agers in many countries have since adopted.