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DOJ Charges Federal Contractor With Leaking Classified Info To Media (thehill.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from The Hill: The Department of Justice charged 25-year-old government contractor Reality Leigh Winner with sharing top secret material with a media outlet, prosecutors announced in a press release Monday. Court documents filed by the government don't specify which media outlet received the materials allegedly leaked by Winner, but NBC News reported that the material went to the Intercept online news outlet. The Intercept published a top secret NSA report Monday that alleged Russian military intelligence launched a 2016 cyberattack on a voting software company. Details on the report published by The Intercept suggest that it was created on May 5, 2017 -- the same day prosecutors say the materials Winner is charged with sharing were created. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether Winner is accused of sharing the report published by the Intercept. Last month, Winner allegedly "printed and improperly removed classified intelligence reporting, which contained classified national defense information" before mailing the materials to an unnamed online news outlet a few days later, according to prosecutors.
When Reality finally struck, no-one went home a Winner :(
Here comes 30 years in prison
"Being white is terrorism".
How'd this idjit get a TS clearance?
Truly the "social sharing" generation!
Who the fuck names their kid "Reality"
It looks like Reality Winner is really Reality Loooouu-zah.
Make an example of her.
I personally think too much stuff is marked as classified which really shouldn't be. Because it is mostly common knowledge, we just don't have the details. However if you are going to leak classified info. Please leak in quality not quantity. I much rather see a report about a leak every few years about something really actionable. About some injustice that is only classified because it makes the ruling people look bad, and is something truly affecting ones conscious.
These little leaks in a state where we are ruled by a 12 year old in a 70 year old body. We are much better putting him in a state of false security where his overconfidence will lead to real mistakes and the leak can hit like a dagger. Vs a constant irritant .
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
She tweeted "...being white is terrorism".
Why do they give race-haters security clearance? Oh, yeah, it was the Obama Administration.
You're adorable.
Most agencies have offices all over the country, but which one is based in Georgia, other than the CDC? If this contractor was working for the CDC why would he have access to cyberhacking information? Cover?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Since she's a huge lib, and the SECURE info was pertaining to Trump...she is a hero. If she was a huge conservative, and the SECURE info was pertaining to (insert liberal president or candidate) she would be considered a traitor in the eyes of the media.
You got leaks about the DNC rigging a primary. About them giving debate questions to a candidate before the debate, along with coordination with news outlets to smear Sanders the proper amount before primaries.
What more could you want than outright organized election rigging?
"Reality Winner" perhaps she considered this was her ace up her sleeve.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
is in for a check
When the leak came out the usual suspects trotted out the usual nonsense:
1. The NSA were clearly lying and these were bogus because Russia is our friend
2. This is obviously "the deep state" (ie management of the NSA, CIA, etc) trying to undermine Cheeto Mussolini with fake news. Sad!
What did the campaign against Winners prove? The docs are the real deal. The NSA does, actually, genuinely believe that the Russian state was actively trying to interfere with the election. They're not making that up. They have evidence - they're not sharing it with you but they have it. They're not trying to undermine anyone, no matter how awful they are. Hell, they're still trying to keep this stuff secret. They're actually trying to protect Trump from negative publicity.
As for Winners, the jokes - based upon her name - write themselves. But yes, she's the real deal. Sessions is confirming she leaked real NSA documents. The rightosphere is confirming she's not some high level intelligence official trying to orchestrate a coup. The NSA documents are legit: Russia interfered with the election.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
You have an odd interpretation of "drop-dead gorgeous". More like "barely-noticeable average". You need to get out more.
drop-dead gorgeous.
You have very low standards
God, I have to scroll to the bottom to get to the one comment actually analyzing the situation.
Reality is a slackware box running on a 386 tucked away in god's sock drawer.
Not only is she a true patriot, she'd drop-dead gorgeous. I'd eat the corn out of her shit.
THAT plain jane is what you label drop-dead gorgeous?
Guess all of us have our preferred flavors of women. Enjoy your corn.
Thanks!
Color printers use a pattern of tiny yellow dots to embed an almost invisible code with the printer serial number and the date and time in every printed document. The Intercept handed over a scan of the document to the NSA for redaction with the code still intact. It is also in the published document. The EFF has the technical details.
While the means might be old news to some, it appears that neither Reality Winner nor The Intercept was sufficiently aware of hardcoded printer tracking techology, or just didn't think to check for it and take preventative steps. I can kind of understand that from Winner who might have just acted on the spur of an opportunistic moment, but The Intercept really ought to have known better and cleaned up the PDFs before publishing, and that may well deter people from leaking to The Intercept in future if they're not confident in their own ability to properly sanitise the data.
Going to be interesting to see how The Intercept tries to make up for their part in her now almost certainly ruined life...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
So wait, if Russia is NOT our friends AND they tried to interfere in our election, why would we, or more correctly the NSA, not want to undermine them? So we have a leaker that got caught the very day the article is published, her name is Reality Winners or all names, and even though she has had ALL KINDS of pro Sanders/Anti-Trump tweets and social media posts that were easily found she was still allowed to hold top secret security clearance. Who would ever doubt this unbelievable string of events??
I guess we can thank her for confirming the NSA discovered Russian interference but most reasonable people would have known that already even if they weren't privy to the details. She'll probably end up in prison for 5-10 years over this.
Ugh what? She's built like a shithouse. Fucking disgusting.
At least when she gets us to pay for the sex change he will be passing, unlike Bradley.
There have been a large number of politically motivated leaks lately. At one point things got so bad the Brits publicly declared they wouldn't share intel anymore.
So far this is the first of these leaks to actually result in an arrest. Several well known leaks came when only a small handful of high level people could have gotten the data to begin with. The FBI needs to arrest all of the people doing the leaking, not just low level contractors. Perhaps this arrest is just the first in series, can it really be that hard to track down these leaks?
Add to that the report being full of "could have" "might have" and "possibility".
It's funny. It was proven that the CIA has a 60 million dollar deal with the Washington Post to allow it to feed stories yet every time a report or leak comes out people that 10 years ago would never trust this crap claim it's "all legit" in an almost "move along, nothing to see here" kind of manner.
Isn't it amazing how only the documents that contain no evidence are leaked. I'm sure you can rationalize that as well.
The only facts are
- for some stupid reason, we have electronic voting machines
- they may be vulnerable to hacking
- some hackers tried to hack them, including Russians
So what? If your government uses electronic voting machines, expect stories about them getting hacked from time to time.
So much confidence in the FBI . . .
Because the NSA is trying to protect the source(s) of their information? That's the only thing that makes sense to me. Trump's spent a bit of time already shitting on our intelligence community, so I really doubt they're holding back this information in loyalty to him.
But protecting one or more sources who got us that information? I can see that. Plus, we already have the knowledge that Trump can't really be trusted with this sort of information, because it's possible he could blab it to whoever.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
the government will put into adding credibility into a story is amazing.
Like I said in a different thread:
After what happened with Snowden, what do you think the odds are that a contractor can both obtain and distribute a NSA document at all without anyone from the NSA noticing ?
I have serious doubts about it and my initial thoughts are this is just the Government pushing the Evil Russians narrative vs the home grown ( DNC ) efforts to skew the election.
Because the former is expected and the latter undermines the trust in the overall US election process. Can't have that now can we ? Bad things happen in armed countries when the populace loses faith in the election systems.
Russia just happens to be a convenient scapegoat for anything that's wrong these days.
Even IF the NSA verifies the document and shows you the evidence they have, after the bullshit they have pulled recently with their surveillance programs, would you trust any of it ?
Dear NSA: That's the problem when you erode / destroy the public trust. When you have a real situation where you need folks to believe you, very few will.
If any at all.
They can create any "documents" they need to advance their" Russian election hacking narrative", including framing a poor shlub.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-05/nsa-leaker-called-trump-piece-shit-fan-bernie-sanders
The notion of republicans standing for small government and democrats standing for big government is laughable. Here's why.
Over the past century, American politics has been fully dominated by the republicans and democrats. But neither has dominated over the other; instead, they have shared in the domination of American politics roughly equally.
Now, if one party stood for small government and the other big government, with both parties having roughly equal influence over American politics over the past century, then naturally, one could expect the end result to be somewhere in the middle. But it's clearly not. In fact, over the past century, the American government has grown exponentially by nearly all measures: depth, breadth, scope, revenue, and power over the people. We are talking about what is now the largest, most expensive, most powerful government AND world empire in human history, with military presence in over 150 countries.
How in the world could that happen, if one of the two dominant parties was actively working against the push for bigger government?
Answer: they never were, and the whole story is a lie.
Millennial Alert!!!
As head of the executive, he (theoretically) has access to all classified material. He also can, again theoretically, declassify anything he wants. I say theoretical because of logistics and political feasibility.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The Russians, or more likely, someone from Russia, tried to hack a company in the US. Wow, like we didn't already know that hackers from every country on earth are trying to hack computers owned by companies in every country on earth. I was born at night, but not last night.
Not being a politician. (They are immune to persecution.)
If they do this for somebody so low on the ladder, can you imagine the witch hunt they would do if it where somebody much higher up who spilled secret information to foreign states that are not really allies? What? They don't? How do you spell hypocrite again??
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
And so in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that did not happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, there were going to be some serious consequences if he did not.
And in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process. But the leaks through Wikileaks had already occurred.
So when I look back in terms of how we handled it, I think we handled it the way it should have been handled. We allowed law enforcement and the intelligence community to do its job without political influence.
So, at the time that Obama made these comments, the NSA had evidence that Russia was continuing with hacking efforts. Tough guy!
At least, the GP is offering a coherent accusation .
Which means, he is one step ahead of the folks demanding "Trump investigation" and "Russian connection". Those not only have no proof, but can't even state the charge...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In your mind there are no laws as long as the results damage the presidency of the USA.
The report does not claim that voting machines were hacked, a once-popular post-election theory from Democrats, nor does it state whether the information pertaining to the voting systems could be used to hack those systems.
As opined by Matt Vespa> , "still, 55 percent of Democrats think that Russia messed with the vote totals to get Trump elected. The Left has gone insane. Like the rest of the Russian collusion drama, there is no evidence that vote tallies were tampered with by a foreign intelligence service."
> the jokes - based upon her name - write themselves
Given that her name was Sara, and she changed it to "Reality", I'd say she damned well invited those jokes herself.
NSA wins twice:
1. Get the "Russia hacked the election" story out there. Greenwald said, "The difference between reporting based on a) anonymous, evidence-free claims & b) leaked documents, should be too obvious to have to explain". NSA probably thought, "you want leaked documents? We'll get you leaked documents. :-) " Thanks to the epiphany he provided, leaks will become the primary propaganda tool.
2. Shut down the leaks. The primary strategy here is always to find and severely punish leakers as a warning to future prospective leakers. They've just executed that exercise while losing no actual secret information.
win/win.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing in the NSA in this document, thus, not whistleblower.
Also mentioned in the document is that there is ZERO EVIDENCE that the Russians actions successful in interfering with the election, only that they tried.
We tried and succeeded in interfering with other countries elections.
While you are right, and the documents are real - take a close look at them. What do they prove?
They show there was a phishing attack by the Russians against some election officials.
It does not show:
- any officials were actually dumb enough to fall for it.
- any voting machines were infected (you don't think they read their emails on the machines that tally votes, do you?)
- any votes were manipulated.
As such, all we can really conclude is that
- this attack was not serious
- this document is pretty worthless and has no business being classified, let alone "top secret"
Right now, my sympathies go out to Ms. Reality Leigh Winner and her family and the crap she's now going to through as pompous politicians and bureaucrats try to make a mountain out of this molehill. What she did was not wise, but they'll try to come down on her like a ton of bricks to make an example out of her (and no one deserves to "be made example of" - that's not how our justice system is supposed to work [i.e. be blind]). Poor girl.
It looks like the NSA's fall-guy random name generator had a bit of a misfire.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
The debate must then be how to punish those who have wronged us and how to better protect ourselves and our elections. But this isn't a conversation the Right seems intent on having. They'd rather vilify the leaker and move on. People are trying to undermine our elections. Why don't they think this is serious? I'll tell you why. It's only when they start losing elections that it's a problem. This is the party that mastered the gerrymander, of politicians choosing voters and not the other way around. This is the party that has naked intent on destroying the cogs of government, to the detriment of all Americans. This is the party where party first is an insult that stings because it's fucking true.
What does having "ALL KINDS of pro Sanders/Anti-Trump tweets and social media posts" have to do with being able to have a TS clearance?
I sure hope we NEVER start basing security clearances on an individuals legitimate political beliefs because that would be what "McCarthyism" was all about.
How is this news? Do you have any idea how many times the US and UN have actually rigged elections? As well as influence and medle? You think Karzi is that popular? Iraq? We even try to interfere in Iranian elections. You act like we discovered electricity. People that have their dumbass brain convince there's going to be an impeachment are fucking insane. That would require all the evidence of the shit we've done in other countries to come to light. It's never going to happen. There is no interest in impeaching the president. If he gets impeached then Pence becomes the president. If he does an amazing job he will get reelected. The political parties are more concerned with making the other side look bad then looking out for America's best interest. They would rather this guy stay in office than replacing with somebody competent if it means losing the next election. You
Not a whistleblower. A whistleblower is clearly defined and must involve illegal activity, corruption, waste,fraud, or abuse. This classified document does not indicate anything other than some hackers, who are suspected to be Russian, made an attempt to compromise the electronic voting machines. You get no whistleblower protection's releasing this classified document. Also it is been well-established that contractors are not entitled to whistleblower protection. When Snowden blew the whistle on illegal NSA activity, he was whistleblowing but still not protected since he was a private contractor. Releasing a classified document like this is subject to espionage charges
built like a shithouse? Sure, I'd pay good money to press my lips against her turd cutter while her delicious shit slides down my eager gullet.
The vigilantes at InfoWars have dug up the following tweets from the accused:
the most dangerous entry to this country was the orange fascist we let into the white house Because Trump is worse than Putin... I can't imagine having kids, i worry enough about the impact of #climatechange on my cats There are many Americans protesting US govt aggression towards Iran. If our Tangerine in Chief declares war, we stand with you! Because GOP are worse than nuclear-armed mullahs.How could she — after openly siding with the enemy and professing utter disrespect to the Commander in Chief — have received a Top Secret clearance?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This is noise...who killed Seth Rich.
The docs he leaked were not from Russia, but an insider leaker tired of the corruption.
Not Russians.
The leaked document could have been manufactured to out the leaker. It does not contain any evidence and the government is not confirming anything. There is not enough information to jump to any conclusions. The story is that they nabbed the perp. Anything beyond that is speculation.
But...it can keep you out of Harvard....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
The NSA documents are legit: Russia interfered with the election.
Doh, the USA interfered with nearly every election in the post-Soviet space and rest of the post-Soviet block, including the Russian election of 1996 and 1993. USA's State Department, NGOs, and private individuals have pumped billions of USD in political aid to various political organizations in Georgia and Ukraine, resulting in three unconstitutional "revolutions" (more like coups) that replaced the current democratically elected administrations with rabid russophobic demagogues and pro-NATO forces. So please don't cry us a river about "russians interfered with the election."
As for the leaked documents, those are extremely vile actions. I mean, we can be near _certain_ that intelligence agencies posses also a whole lot of internal classified reports saying "no, russians did not interfere or there is not sufficient evidence" or "who knows who did it". Somehow those documents are never leaked. Instead, we see on a weekly basis highly selective leaking of classified documents that designed primarily to get the the WH administration rather than deal with the Russian hooliganery.
I guess, this is happening because Obama simply slapped that idiot Manning on her wrists instead of letting her rot in prison. I hope this "Winner" and the like actually receive and serve the sentence prescribed by the constitution.
You're never going to persuade anyone on that. The choir will nod, and your opponents will glare at you.
Pro-choice people see one person's rights at stake (the woman's) in an abortion decision. Since there is only one person, there is no possible conflict, and the common-sense policy is for government to stay the fuck out of it.
Pro-life people see two people's rights at stake (the woman's rights and the fetus' rights) in direct conflict for the same resources. Any decision will result in some person's rights being infringed (and to a lethal degree, if the fetus loses). Even without government interference, someone is going to have a really bad day. Regardless of whether you want small government or big government, if you think a fetus is a person, you are probably going to want government involved, unless your "small government" is small to the point of total anarchy.
It's not a disagreement about "small government." It's not even really a conservative/liberal issue (though perversely, many people do seem to appear to align a certain way, without explanation). It's simply a disagreement about whether or not the fetus is a person, and therefore has rights which can possibly be infringed. If it's a person, then government has to protect its rights. If it's not a person, then the government should be protecting other peoples' rights from being unnecessarily infringed in a misguided effort to protect something relatively important.
Leave abortion out of the small government issue. It's a religious issue, unless we all somehow magically get to a consensus agreement on "what is a person?" so that we can objectively test/measure personhood instead of everyone just listening to their feelings (i.e. half-assed rarely-considered opinions). And, hint: we do not have that consensus yet. Not even close.
Wanna fight for pro-choice? Help create that consensus. Get people to think about "what is a person?" and have fun with it, too. It's not just a question for abortion, but also for upcoming or theoretical things like AI, genetic engineering, aliens, etc. The more people work through the essense of personhood and think about why we protect peoples' rights, the more likely they'll develop more compassion while also finding little specs of goo to be unqualified.
What is a person?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
So the NSA refuses to share info proving Putin interfered with the election with the courts, the government and the people of the U.S. I think we know who the traitors are.
Get a real job shareblue.
The doc's didn't say that at all, idiot.
>Hell, they're still trying to keep this stuff secret
yeah the leftist leakers and media are trying to protect trump
In Theory, no one would steal documents from the NSA.
In Reality...
(rimshot)
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
by not having a system thats so obviously stupid like voting machines, you fix 99 percent of the fucking problems
the problem is you dont want to fix those problems, because you expect to use them for your own benefint too as soon as you can, for gods sake, you cant even stop dead people from voting multiple times
get a fucking clue
Give her 20 years to think about her ignorance. Too bad they can't get a two for one by locking up Hillary with her.
Supporting one politician and opposing another is not the same thing as supporting rape and opposing racial equality. The former will NOT keep you out of Harvard. Only the latter.
No doubt she's the prettiest girl working the docks.
From cnn:
"Reality Winner posted under a pseudonym, Sara Winners, but didn't seem concerned with concealing her identity, as she used a photo of herself as a profile picture and posted a selfie in February. She posted about leaks and regularly admonished the Trump administration, though her Twitter activity dropped off significantly after she began working for Pluribus in February. On Instagram, where she used the name @Reezlie, same as her Twitter handle, she mostly posted selfies from the gym or photos of food. On Twitter, she followed Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, several accounts with links to the hacking collective, Anonymous, and several "alt" government agency accounts that became popular after Trump's inauguration. Many of the accounts claim to be run by agency employees unhappy with Trump."
And she somehow got top secret clearance? Is this some kind of joke? If they couldn't have seen this coming, what can they see? Maybe they should contract cnn for their personnel screening.
They are competent, every printed version will have SYNONYMS or "typos" for/in some words, that are DIFFERENT in every version that you print. The original version never gets shown to anyone. By looking which particular sequence of synonyms/typos is in the leaked version, you can easily identify which user account printed which leaked version by comparing the texts.
That's why if you plan on leaking classified information, you should run it through a similar piece of software, to remove the synonym/typo tracking. And even then it can be in the sentence structure, paragraph size or whatever else there is in a text...
Publishing anti-Trump statements like swearing to oppose anything he does, to be the resistance, and calling him an evil fascist - and then volunteering to work in his administration? And not just in his administration, but inside the most secretive parts of it, where you get access to all sorts of information?
Yeah, anyone with half a brain would be suspicious of activists that publicly declare that they hate someone, then go one to try to become one of the primary secret tools of the person...
Is this a hoax?
That for all the shit you can claim about Iran, they still haven't utilized the nuclear option yet, unlike the U.S.
Now you could claim 'well, but they support Islam Extremists', to which I would reply: 'Taliban, ISIS, Kurds... Who are, all the extremists the U.S. has supported.'
For some more fun, look up 'Michael Israel'.
you republitards put into deflecting this back at the Democrats is amazing. trump won. Get over it!
Some do. We all used paper ballots last time. I think a lot of places went back to paper.
Used to be we even got a receipt. The top of the form would split off and it had a number. In theory I could go back and find that exact ballot to make sure it really was counted. I haven't seen that since the 1990s.
So...telling racially or sexually insensitive jokes, or making comments on such (no action on either)...should keep you out of any institution?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My opinion of that is irrelevant to my point, which is that political affiliation doesn't matter when it comes to matriculating at Harvard. But if you must know, I would certainly count such things as a big mark against someone if I were deciding whether or not to bring them into an institution. In this case, Harvard has far more qualified applicants than they have opening. It shouldn't be a surprise that conduct counter to the values they stand for would be a deciding factor - there are plenty of people who are as qualified to attend but who aren't jerks.