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Reality Winner Sentenced To More Than 5 Years For Leaking Info About Russia Hacking Attempts (nbcnews.com)
A former government contractor who pleaded guilty to leaking U.S. secrets about Russia's attempts to hack the 2016 presidential election was sentenced Thursday to five years and three months in prison. From a report: It was the sentence that prosecutors had recommended in the plea deal -- the longest sentence ever given for a federal crime involving leaks to the news media -- for Reality Winner, the Georgia woman at the center of the case. Winner was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and no fine, except for a $100 special assessment fee. The crime carried a maximum penalty of 10 years. U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall in Augusta, Georgia, was not bound to follow the plea deal, but elected to give Winner the amount of time prosecutors requested. Winner, 26, who contracted for the National Security Agency, pleaded guilty in June to copying a classified report that detailed the Russian government's efforts to penetrate a Florida-based voting software supplier. Further reading: How a Few Yellow Dots Burned the Intercept's NSA Leaker.
Is that her name?
(Beside which, the NSA has really bad security.)
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Because the documents she leaked showed nothing unusual. The Russians! meddling involved supporting and financing more Hillary causes than Trump.
Here's also hoping for a pardon for her from the "Orange Orangutan's" successor.
3 years might be sooner.
If so, then Pence will get to run as an incumbent.
Likely twice.
Seriously - imagine Trump without the baggage. 4% economic growth, record low black unemployment? Trump's got better approval ratings than Obama did at this point despite all that crazy incompetent Trump baggage. And Obama won reelection pretty easily. The current likely front-runner for the Democrats in 2020 - Elizabeth Warren - just fatally blew off her own foot, meaning the Democrat primaries are going to be a shitfest of who can run the farthest to the left. Imagine how well the, "Our hard-core socialism will return the US to the stagnation of the Obama years!" candidate that comes out the Democrat convention is going to fly outside of "progressive" circles...
Do Democrats really want to impeach Trump?
WHAT election fraud? None has been shown, and President Obama stated such, emphatically, well after the election. Seriously, the ONLY fraud going on here is the belief there is a Trump/Russia connection. NOTHING has been shown. There's been a few convictions and plea bargains related to tax issues from years ago - and nothing from the Trump campaign. Nothing.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm still pissed at The Intercept. Their incompetence in handling the original documents is what blew their source. No one is going to leak to them now if they just turn around and give all the incriminating evidence to the government. They really should have known better.
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Here's hoping -- she's a national treasure and deserves a good, cushy job after being railroaded for doing her civic duty and reporting election fraud to the media.
No, you don't get to misuse classified information just to score political points.
(Well, unless you are already a major Democrat politician.)
I'm ambivalent about this.
On the one hand, leaking classified info should be punished. I agree, and that part is fine.
Also, her intent wasn't "civic duty", it was apparently hatred of the president.
On the other hand, James Comey did *exactly* the same thing as Reality Winner, for *exactly* the same reasons, and hasn't been charged and got a book deal out of it. (Comey admitted to doing the leaking under oath. No need to cite here, it was in all the news and google is your friend.)
It's one of those "don't agree, but defend your right to do it" things. The law is nothing if it's based on social class. Either Comey should be charged, or Reality Winner should go free.
I don't think it's likely, but President Trump *should* pardon Reality Winner. Whistleblowers serve an important check on the workings of government, and should be encouraged within reason.
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You'd think after Snowden they would bring in and train servicemen/women instead of contractors.
The military expects you will not stay long at any particular post. You get your assignment, complete it, and move on to another assignment. The military does this because their main goal is fighting wars, not intelligence gathering. The various billets just round-out your knowledge but you're primarily there to shoot people.
For something like the NSA, this is pretty bad. Because it takes quite a while to build up the expertise they need, and the servicemen/women rotate out too quickly. So they use contractors because they can stay in the same position for many years.
You could argue that they should use civilian government employees, since they too can stay in the same position for many years. But that runs into a big problem: pay. There's a formal pay scale for government employees, and it caps out very far below what an NSA contractor can make in the private sector (even if they were not working as a government contractor).
Raising the pay scale means raising it across the entire government, so that's not a good option. There is a way to have exceptions to the standard pay scale, but they're not easy to push through and having something the size of the NSA operating almost entirely on exceptions is not workable. So now we're down to requiring Congress and/or OMB creating a separate pay scale for computer professions that is significantly higher than the normal one for computer professionals. Which, aside from the massive bureaucratic hurdles in doing that, would result in a lot of non-computer-professional government employees trying to switch their classification to this pay scale so they can get paid more.
Or they just use contractors.
As for whether or not that would prevent leaks, service men and women also leak. You mentioned Snowden, but there's also Manning.
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She was never hired by the NSA. She got her security clearance via the Air Force (as a translator.) She leaked NSA documents because everything is contracted out. In this case, her employer when she got the documents was Pluribus International Corporation.
Also, if she was named that by her parents, you shouldn't blame her. Like 20% of people hate their names, but consider it too hard to change.
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And if nothing comes out? Willing to agree there's really nothing there?
I'm not a big partisan political fanatic, but it seems to me that the evidence that has already come to light, accompanied by the lies that have already been told, would be more than sufficient to send any Democrat to the gallows.
So I'd have to answer your question with "No." If Congress did their job, what's out there now would already be enough to impeach Trump and the horse he rode in on.