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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.
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.
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?
It's a poorly worded sentence. The agency in question is the NSA and the company, Pluribus International, is based out of Georgia. Or at least the leaker was. The article I read this morning made it clear that it was an NSA document that was leaked, the NSA that tracked the leak down, and an NSA system was used to find the document to begin with.
The article doesn't say that's how they found her. They say that an audit showed six people printed the doc. That is from the IT system logs. Of those six, only one had email correspondence with that particular media outlet. If I have read the story correctly that's how they narrowed it down. When questioned she admitted it. The fact that she worked for the NSA (even as a contractor) and used email to talk to reporters is baffling.
It means that government is limited - that does not have a role in say wage and price freezes (rent control); that it's function is not to redistribute wealth; etc...
I think the problem is we all agree on "small government" and then assume everyone else is with us on the specifics. For me, "small government" means "Not restricting freedoms and rights." Like no laws against abortion.
I'd also argue that having your rights abridged by the government and having your rights abridged by a corporation are different only in that you got to vote for the government. To me, a government that is too small to regulate, say, comcast or health insurance agencies, that's really pretty similar to "big government."
Finally, with wealth inequality reaching the robber barron age, I can't fathom how people would still be saying "government shouldn't redistribute wealth." FFS the fastest way to a situation we'd all consider to be "big government" is through an oligarchy.
From personal experience, I know that link is incomplete. Even mere Secret level clearance takes weeks, Top Secret takes much longer. So her security clearance evaluations started sometime in 2016, guess who was in the White House that year.