Naomi Wolf thinks the Petraeus story is about snooping by the national security state

[struggle4progress]

Sexual privacy under threat in a surveillance society
By Naomi Wolf, Special to CNN
updated 1:31 PM EST, Mon November 19, 2012
... this story is about the terrifying power of the Patriot Act, married to the terrifying power of the resurrected Espionage Act -- and combined with a lethal admixture of our nation's Puritanism, prurience about and ignorance regarding sexuality ...
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/19/opinion/wolf-marriage-infidelity/index.html

Speaking as a boring old pasty-skinned guy, I really really hope Naomi Wolf is not the new face of feminism that her admirers consider her to be, because I find her to be a gigantic moron. Of course, the Petraeus story seems to be chock-full of morons, so Naomi Wolf has to work quite hard here, to stand out in the crowd -- but IMO she's having some success

[libodem]

1. I think she has a valid POV

Right to privacy was removed with the Patriot act. All telecom and computer info is collected with zero probable cause. If you receive an NSA letter you can't even tell a lawyer. This admin might not be brutal with it but I feel if the pubs get ahold of it again it will be like Hoover at the FBI, holding dirt on everyone and everything, all the time, just because they can.

So much room for abuse of human and civil rights.

[struggle4progress]

4. I suspect she's blowing smoke, like so many others. Chaffetz (R-Utah) insists a FISA warrant would

be required for the emails -- but the FISA warrants go back to at least the Clinton era. People are also noticing "Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that Congress enacted to protect your privacy in electronic communications, a warrant is not required for e-mails six months old or older" -- a law that goes back to the middle of the Reagan-Bush era

See:
Rep. Chaffetz: Special Warrants Needed in Petraeus Probe Suggest FBI Found More Than Sex
http://blogs.defensenews.com/intercepts/2012/11/rep-chaffetz-special-warrants-needed-in-petraeus-probe-suggests-fbi-found-more-than-sex/
Lee Davis: Petraeus Affair Raises Concerns About E-mail Privacy
Monday, November 19, 2012 - by Lee Davis
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2012/11/19/238906/Lee-Davis-Petraeus-Affair-Raises.aspx

Privacy concerns have been legitimate for years, of course; and the Patriot Act has always been disgusting IMO; but it's not at all clear to me that the Patriot Act has much (if anything at all) to do with the Petraeus affair, so it looks to me like Wolf is just winging it for attention

"What if the power regarding who tells you that your spouse has betrayed you, becomes not a private struggle in private life, but a matter for the state to decide?" Wolf says. Of course, there's nothing like that here: the story starts with an investigation into email threats and evidence that the sender knows at lot about the CIA chief's schedule, which reasonably set off alarm bells

Even more tasteless is Wolf's "We can be threatened with the Espionage Act. This is why Assange is hiding in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. If Assange were convicted of receiving classified information, and extradited under the Espionage Act, he could theoretically be shipped to Guantanamo." But Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy to avoid extradition from the UK to Sweden on rape charges, and the claims that he could be "shipped to Guantanamo" are so laughable that he lawyers finally decided to avoid that line of argument in the UK courts. As the column is allegedly devoted to the defense of sexual privacy against the government, it leaves us to wonder if she thinks that the rape accusations against Assange are somehow a violation of his sexual privacy, especially odd as she certainly does not believe rape victims are entitled to sexual privacy:

Naomi Wolf: Anonymity for rape accusers gives impunity to prosecutors
The Vagina author's odd comments on Newsnight
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis/2012/09/naomi-wolf

[elfin]

2. Was she the "advisor" who told Gore to wear brown?

Or was that "earthtones". Sorry, Naomi, I never got past that. And so, I never take what you say or write seriously, if you took that advisory position to seriously give such vacuous advice.

[sense]

3. I certainly hope you won't

be judged by this post....

[stevenleser]

5. She might have a point about privacy in general, but it doesn't work with Petraeus

When you sign up for a government job that has a security clearance, you sign away your right to have things be private. Put another way, you sign paperwork that gives various agencies the right to go through your private files, email, etc.

Petraeus had no expectation of privacy or that his emails were not going to be examined at some point by an investigating agency.