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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 :(
Truly the "social sharing" generation!
It looks like Reality Winner is really Reality Loooouu-zah.
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.
Small government applies to the breadth of what the government does. Small government does not mean inept, in times of war (say WWII) it does not mean keeping taxes low or not paying soldiers. 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...
You may agree or disagree with the positions - but you are simply making a straw man and digging yourself into an intellectual hole when you convince yourself of this bullsh!t.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wish I had a crystal ball. :-(
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Aren't all intelligence leaks politically motivated?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
Some are motivated by greed - Aldrich Ames is one such example.
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.
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.
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."
We could kill Amazon or Walmart in a heart-beat by not buying things from them.
The oceans could all be drained in a heartbeat if all the water molecules decided to evaporate simultaneously. They won't of course, they have an extremely long history of not simply deciding to do that except when there's a lot of heat. Likewise, most people won't vote with their wallet against corporations, they have a long history of not voting against anything but the worst corporations when a lot of other stuff is going on.
Infowars, really? You do realize that Alex Jones has admitted in court proceedings that he's just playing a character and doesn't actually believe the stuff he says, don't you?
The actual tweet is a reply to Kanye West: "@kanyewest you should make a shirt that says, "being white is terrorism"". Kanye West - the "George Bush doesn't care about black people" guy. The Obama hasn't accomplished as much as Bush because "...he ain't got those connections. Black people don't have the same level of connections as Jewish people...We ain't Jewish. We don't got family that got money like that." guy. The reason-he-lost-an-awards-show being "maybe my skin's not right" guy. A guy who's a living parody of himself.
And a guy who runs a fashion line. Hence the joke about the T-shirt.
Of course, to you people the problem isn't the fact that Russia not only launched an aggressive campaign against the public to shift the election, but also tried to compromise voting software and spearfish local election officials. No no, that's not the problem at all. The problem is that someone dared leak the fact that they did this. And that it's someone who doesn't like Trump - like most Americans. And oh my god, she also supports BLM, like the majority of people her age group - including white people in her age group. Clearly the problem isn't a major effort by a hostile power to compromise an election - it's that a person who agrees with the stances of the majority dared tell people about it! Damn her!
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
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.