"Fruit Salad" and braggadocio

The I's Have It - An epidemic of egomania strikes America's civilian and military leadership.

Excerpt:

It used to be that if you were big, you'd never tell people how big you were because that would be kind of classless, and small. In fact it would be a proof of smallness.

So don't be showy. The big are modest.

Ha.

There is the issue—small but indicative of something larger—of how members of the U.S. military present themselves, and the awe they consciously encourage in the public and among the political class. The other day on his Daily Beast blog, Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from a reader noting the way officers are now given and relentlessly wear on their dress uniforms ribbons, markers and awards for pretty much everything they do—what used to be called fruit salad. Mr. Sullivan posted two pictures we echo here, one of Gen. David Petraeus and one of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. This is the Eisenhower of D-Day, of the long slog through Europe in World War II. He didn't seem to see the need to dress himself up and tell you what he'd done. Maybe he thought you knew. He didn't wear all the honors to which he was entitled, though he could have used them to dazzle the masses if that had been what he was interested in.

Top brass sure is brassier than it used to be. And you have to wonder what that's about. Where did the old culture of modesty go? Ulysses S. Grant wore four stars on his shoulder and nothing else on his uniform. And that was a fellow who'd earned a few medals.

Comment: Peggy Noonan in top form. Image source. Contrast Dwight Eisenhower in 1947

How the authorities to get to your email

It's not that hard for authorities to get to your email

Excerpts:

Unless an email sender goes to great pains to cover his or her tracks — using anonymous remailers, for example — it’s fairly trivial for a law enforcement official to obtain a court order and track down the computer used to commit a crime with the help of an Internet service provider. But how could federal investigators link an anonymous email to a suspect without even going to court?

Some Web mail services, including Yahoo and Microsoft's Outlook.com, send user IP addresses across the Web with every email, according to privacy researcher Chris Soghoian, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union. IP addresses can be used to track the physical location of a computer user connected to the Internet, sometimes without the help of an Internet service provider.

Broadwell had used a Yahoo account publicly in the past. If she used a new Yahoo account for any of the threatening emails — federal officials told NBC’s Michael Isikoff that she used several accounts to send the emails — agents would have had an easy time gathering a list of IP addresses from the threatening emails Kelley provided to them. But even if Broadwell used another service that doesn't "leak" IP addresses, an FBI agent can obtain such information by subpoenaing those providers.

Some reports suggest Broadwell and Petraeus did take steps to evade cyber-investigators. They apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic. The Associated Press reported Broadwell and Petraeus composed some emails and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder for each other to read. That avoids creating an email transmission trail, which is easier to trace. It's a technique that al-Qaida terrorists began using several years ago and teenagers in many countries have since adopted.

Comment: my email is so bland, it would bore the FBI to death

"All In": "embedded" and other "double meanings"

'Broadwell Embedded With the General': Double Meanings on Amazon.com

All In: The Education of General David Petraeus

Comment: The list

• "Broadwell embedded with the general"
• "[an] insider's account"
• "Broadwell simultaneously provides an intimate look at Petraeus the man"
• "Broadwell captures his basic tenets of counterinsurgency and basic approach to leadership-as well as Petraeus's personal qualities and character"
• "Paula Broadwell takes readers into the briefing rooms"
• "It is fascinating and insightful, informed by remarkable access to the man both on and off the battlefield."
• "It is written with an insider's lively understanding of the workings of today's Army. I've known David Petraeus since he was a colonel and written two books in which he appeared, but I still learned a lot about him from this book. All In feels at times like we are sitting at his side in Afghanistan, reading his e-mails over his shoulder."