The Email Security Tricks Petraeus Missed

The Spy Chief Should Have Known That “Dead Dropping” Is So 2004

Having an extramarital affair in 2012 is not an easy task if you’re the chief of the world’s most renowned spy agency. To communicate with your mistress you can set up a Gmail account under a pseudonym, even adopt tactics favored by terrorists to avoid email interception. But your digital trail can still be traced—as philandering former CIA director David Petraeus recently discovered.

Just in case you’re reading this after awaking from a coma: Petraeus was caught out having an affair with Paula Broadwell, his biographer, following an FBI investigation into harassing …