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Barely an hour after a news organization published an article about a Top Secret National Security Agency document on Russian hacking, the Justice Department announced charges against a 25-year-old government contractor who a senior federal official says was the leaker of the document.
The May 5, 2017 intelligence document published by The Intercept, an online news organization, describes new details about Russian efforts to hack voting systems in the U.S a week prior to the 2016 presidential election. While the document doesn't say the hacking changed any votes, it "raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results."
Even as the document was ricocheting around Washington, the Justice Department announced that a criminal complaint was filed in the Southern District of Georgia charging Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor, with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet.
Source: NBC News
Once investigative efforts identified Winner as a suspect, the FBI obtained and executed a search warrant at her residence. According to the complaint, Winner agreed to talk with agents during the execution of the warrant. During that conversation, Winner admitted intentionally identifying and printing the classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a "need to know," and with knowledge that the intelligence reporting was classified. Winner further admitted removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the news outlet, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents.
Source: Department of Justice
While the document provides a rare window into the NSA's understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying "raw" intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.
Source: The Intercept
How The Intercept Outed Reality Winner
Julian Assange: Alleged NSA leaker 'must be supported'
Bad tradecraft: How the Intercept may have outed its own leaker
WikiLeaks tweet #1: "Suspected Intercept reporter gave US government NSA whistleblower Reality Leigh Winner's post code, printout and her report number" and tweet #2: "WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this 'reporter'".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:37AM (3 children)
Only six people were given access to this document. It contains no meaningful intelligence. Interestingly enough even in the diagrams it's stated that the "Russian connection" is speculation from analysts - which is already public knowledge. Even the phishing attacks are very public knowledge. You can see an example of one of the attacks being carried out (succesfully) in the Wikileaks emails of Podesta who was fooled by the incredibly clever "This is google. Click on this random .tk site and go enter your password, because you've been hacked... so we need your password." He actually was suspicious of the email and sent it off to their tech security guy who decided it was legit. I'm sure there was no nepotism in his hiring. Rant aside - this article comes with a thrilling title that a partisan driven leaker would find great value in leaking. They get their rat and as a double whammy they're also getting to imply The Intercept, one of the few remaining reputable independent media outlets, was somehow at fault for this leaker's complete lack of any security precautions whatsoever.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @11:28AM
https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/statement-on-justice-department-allegations/ [theintercept.com]
Here's a funny thing. If The Intercept defends itself and details the leaker's "complete lack of any security precautions", they risk adding to the evidence against the leaker. No wonder they have "no further comment". It's a PR lose-lose situation for The Intercept.
You have offered a good defense of The Intercept. WikiLeaks will continue to shit on The Intercept [thedailybeast.com] because it could direct exclusive leaks away from First Look/The Intercept and to WikiLeaks instead. More leaks means more donations and Bitcoins.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:32PM (1 child)
I'd disagree. I was a follower from day one, and their initial PR was investigative reporting, and they actually did a little, and that was cool.
Then there was a week in the election cycle when they must have signed an advertising contract with the DNC because in the span of one week my RSS feed went from 100% vaguely obscure yet interesting investigative journalism to about 90% of the lowest form of anti-Trump propaganda. For a couple weeks I watched the drivel roll in then stopped following The Intercept.
Lets take a look at their home page this morning. Top story is still pushing the dead narrative of Russian Election Hackers, which is starting to smell like UFO conspiracy theorists, or more accurately a witch hunt in the Salem sense. Next story is a weird anti-Trump piece where two people said something stupid and Trump's only making fun of one of them for being a moron because he's racist or a nazi or some idiocy not worth reading. Bitching about how the details of the USS Liberty attack remain secret, which is completely Fing useless and aside from agitprop purposes accomplishes nothing because it reports nothing new. A fairly idiotic anti-Trump story about how toll road operators like Trump's proposed infrastructure plan therefore in some "friend of my enemy is my enemy" identity politics sense, that means we should hate toll road operators and/or hate Trump, more likely the latter given this birdcage liner's history. Another anti-Trump story where some crank democrat senator technically did not lie when he said that Russian Hackers have messed with more computers than were in the lame fake report we're talking about, which to IT type people is idiotically obvious because, no not every powned windows box randomly port scanning the internet that happens to be located in Russia was mentioned specifically by IP address in the fake report about the fake attacks, so the senator was lying in a meta sense of what he's implying, but in a strictly literal sense he was telling the truth, there exist Russians who hack a lot of stuff.
Then comically "Support our fearless journalism" Yeah how about you do some first? Either journalism or fearless journalism? Even just a tiny little bit? Merely spreading DNC agitprop propaganda is not journalism no matter how many times "the intercept" or "msnbc" or "cnn" does it. Running a commercial for your political party and calling it "the truth" is not journalism. And there's nothing fearless in parroting the rest of the establishment legacy media which is 95% democratic party members. Whats "brave" about being an establishment stooge? Oh how brave you are to sound like a down-market version of the New York Times, you're just so brave, Rambo, for taking on ... um... nobody like that. The counter-culture from 1960 is in charge today. The "real" brave or counter cultural group today is the alt-right, the natsocs, Trump supporters, anyone against SJWs, anyone for free speech, anyone not anti-white racist, etc.
The Intercept was rolled out with a PR plan to provide investigative journalism. All its providing today is sloganeering, intensely establishment, agitprop. There is no investigation, just whatever is mainstream establishment agit-prop pushed without any research or investigation and absolutely no critical thinking.
I donno if they got bought out, compromised, maybe the initial PR was fake all along. But something happened between the first press releases a long time ago and today when it's basically the "weekly world news" of the democratic national committee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 08 2017, @05:57AM
lowest form of anti-Trump propaganda
Trump's Twitter feed?