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from the what-were-her-parents-thinking? dept.
Reality Winner, a former NSA contractor accused of leaking a document to The Intercept, has had her interrogation by the FBI detailed in a transcript filed by federal prosecutors:
A National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking a classified report on Russian hacking aimed at the 2016 election told FBI agents she smuggled the document out of a high security intelligence facility in her pantyhose. That and other details appear in a transcript federal prosecutors filed in court Wednesday detailing the interrogation of 25-year-old linguist Reality Winner by the FBI as they carried out a search warrant at her home in June.
[...] Winner appears to say she believed the contents of the report — which described Russian spearfishing cyberattacks aimed at U.S. voter registration databases — should be in the public debate. "I saw the article and was like, I don't understand why this isn't a thing," she said. "It made me very mad ... I guess I just didn't care about myself at that point. ... Yeah, I screwed up royally."
[...] The transcript hints at possible political motivations for the leak. Winner says she objected to her workplace tuning the TV to Fox News. She also had a signed photo of CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper, although she said the signature was fake. "I wasn't trying to be a Snowden or anything," Winner said, referring to NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his massive disclosures of details on U.S. government surveillance. "I guess it's just been hard at work because ... I've filed formal complaint about them having Fox News on, you know? Uh, at least, for God's sake, put Al Jazeera on, or a slideshow with people's pets. I've tried anything to get that changed." Despite Winner's statement to the FBI agents, prosecutors say that in a Facebook chat in March with her sister, Winner said she was on the "side" of both Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
On pages 4-5 of the transcript, the FBI agents discuss letting Reality Winner (RW) put groceries in her fridge and leash up her dog. Do they teach them that technique at the Academy?
Previously: Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bornagainpenguin on Friday September 29 2017, @12:16AM (9 children)
How the hell do these people get clearance again?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @12:30AM
I'm pretty sure that is classified.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @12:34AM
They're in intelligence... Why would you want people who are interested in watching fox?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 29 2017, @02:22AM (6 children)
See this [soylentnews.org] above.
Also, she's pretty much the typical petulant linguist cow. Linguists are their own special breed of military asshole, kinda like how MPs/SPs are. If you met the people with clearances outside the military, you'd be even more horrified.
Imagine the perfect '50's husband found dead from autoerotic asphyxiation wearing panties, found by his own wife who had no idea. That husband is pretty much every person outside the military who has a clearance.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Friday September 29 2017, @02:41AM
Careful around the age of 50, eth, careful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by Yog-Yogguth on Friday September 29 2017, @02:51AM (2 children)
You left out “…wearing panties around his head, causing the suffocation, and they're his own, found by…”.
I had a clearance once when military (not US), nothing impressive, these days I'm fairly certain I'm somewhere between "Extremist" and "Terrorist" or both and maybe also in a special category for people accidentally bumbling into and stepping on the toes of people that are busily trying to stare goats to death or who are fishing for sea monsters with radioactive bait. They ought to have a category like that, maybe named "Ignore this moron"? :D
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday September 29 2017, @09:18AM (1 child)
I've also held clearance (again, not in the US, but in a country with data-sharing agreements with the US) that let me see various bits of top-secret information. The thing that always seems to be missing from press descriptions of clearance kinds is that all classified information is compartmentalised. Just having clearance meant that I was allowed to see anything classified below 'minister's eye's only' that I could demonstrate a need to know. It wasn't like there was a big list of all stuff marked 'top secret' that I could browse. The different classifications really just meant the level of oversight on this. Stuff that was restricted, I could pretty much read at will. Stuff that was secret, I could see if my line manager thought it related to something I was working on. Top secret stuff needed approval from a couple of people to check that I really needed it.
The failure in the US with Snowden and Winner seems to be that they've been completely failing at compartmentalisation, more than anything else.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 29 2017, @04:47PM
Yes, exactly. There are two core tenets to access to classified information: (1) Having the security clearance and (2) having the need-to-know.
The problem was that safeguards which were in place in other NSA facilities were not in place in Hawaii, where Snowden reportedly pilfered the documents using a scraper.
Now, even a plebe like me knows that Hawaii is a hub for Chinese intelligence activity against the US. If there's any goddamn facilities which need to be hardened, they're the ones in Hawaii.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 29 2017, @04:39AM (1 child)
Quite imaginative, aren't we ethanol-fueled?
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday September 29 2017, @04:48AM
If you can offer a more accurate analogy, we're waiting for it. Anytime now, sweetheart.