[General] Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and
teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said. Rather than transmitting emails to the other’s inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic “dropbox,” the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
"A January 2005 PBS special on al-Qaeda identified the tactic as one of several “terrorist tricks, alongside logging in from public Internet cafes,” reports Max Fisher in his Washington Post blog.
It's a good bet that it won't be long before Gmail and other free email services are tracking drafts - if they aren't already.
Image courtesy of Gmail.
