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posted by takyon on Thursday June 28 2018, @01:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the reality-check dept.

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Reality Winner pleads guilty to leaking NSA election hacking data

Reality Winner was expected to plead guilty to leaking NSA data, and she's done just that. The whistleblower has officially pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful retention and dissemination of national defense information. Sentencing will have to wait, but the felony carries a maximum penalty of 63 months (5.25 years) with up to three years of supervised release.

Winner faced the charge after giving The Intercept NSA documents that showed Russia's military intelligence wing, the GRU, attempting to hijack the computers of 122 local election officials ahead of the 2016 American vote. The NSA had determined that Russia wanted to collect information about election-related hardware and software in what could have been a precursor to manipulating the vote itself.

Previously: Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document
Reality Winner NSA Leak Details Revealed by Court Transcript


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday June 29 2018, @01:00AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday June 29 2018, @01:00AM (#700049) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner#Intelligence_report_leak_and_arrest [wikipedia.org]

    The Intercept had contacted the NSA on May 30 and sent copies of the documents in order to confirm their veracity. The NSA notified the FBI of the situation on June 1. The FBI realized the documents had been printed out because the PDF copies sent by The Intercept "appeared to be folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space". Next, the NSA did an internal audit, confirming that Winner was one of six workers who had accessed the particular documents on its classified system, but only Winner's computer had been in contact with The Intercept using a personal email account. On June 3, the FBI obtained a warrant to search Winner's electronic devices, and she was arrested.

    Even if The Intercept hadn't sent NSA the copies or published the full docs, her OPSEC was absolutely terrible and she would have been caught anyway.

    The tech illiterate shouldn't be leaking, but maybe no NSA employee who hasn't also broken the internal security system should be leaking. She was on a very short list of suspects just for accessing the document.

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