Collaborate Disseminate
A former National Security Agency contractor pleaded guilty Tuesday to espionage, becoming the first person to be prosecuted under the Trump administration for leaking classified information. Continue reading Reality Winner, N.S.A. Contractor, Sentenced to 5+ Years in Leak Case
Reality Winner, the US government contractor who leaked top secret documents about Russian hacking, has pleaded guilty.
Continue reading Reality Winner pleads guilty after being unmasked by microdots
Former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner accepted a guilty plea agreement on Tuesday. For one count of espionage, Winner faces 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release. She originally faced ten years in prison. Final sentencing is yet to come. Winner, 26, is a former Air Force linguist who then worked as a contractor for the NSA in Georgia where she printed out classified material about the Russian government’s attempts at interference in U.S. elections and mailed the file to a reporter at The Intercept. The report was published on June 5, 2017. Winner had already been arrested two days earlier. “All of these actions I did willfully, meaning I did them of my own free will,” she said at Tuesday’s hearing. Winner’s lawyers and family pointed to the Espionage Act, a century-old piece of legislation routinely criticized as draconian, as the reason she pleaded guilty on Tuesday. “The […]
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A 26-year old former NSA contractor accused of leaking classified documents is now looking to subpoena some of the largest cybersecurity firms in the industry as part of her legal defense against the government. Reality Winner was arrested in June 2017 for allegedly removing a top-secret report on Russian hacking activity connected to the 2016 election from an NSA facility where she worked at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, and sending it to The Intercept. Winner’s lawyers are also seeking to subpoena several state governments and U.S. intelligence agencies. According to Politico, the requested subpoenas, filed Friday, target representatives of the states formally notified by the Department of Homeland Security last September that they were targeted by hackers the U.S. government says were acting on behalf of the Russian government. In total, 21 states, five government agencies, and 11 cybersecurity firms — including TrendMicro, FireEye, Eset, CrowdStrike, Volexity, F-Secure Corporation, ThreatConnect, Secureworks and Fidelis […]
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Continue reading Alleged NSA leaker seeks to subpoena major cybersecurity companies, intel agencies
The National Security Agency’s prospective new inspector general testified on Wednesday that he will investigate the intelligence agency’s problem of repeated contractor leaks. Robert Storch, the Justice Department’s deputy inspector general since March 2015, was first nominated in November by then-President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump nominated Storch again in June. Storch would become the NSA’s first independent watchdog. Storch sat before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, with questions about leaks sandwiched between inquiries about whistleblower protections at the NSA, two intimately related subjects that have moved to the center of the U.S. political universe over the last several years. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked that Storch’s new job quickly turn to the issue of NSA’s security woes. “I want to express a concern I have about NSA,” Feinstein said. “Beginning with [Edward] Snowden, we have had three major thefts of people walking out with classified material. I have spoken to the heads […]
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In this latest edition of the “Smashing Security” podcast, the team are joined by Ian Whalley to discuss NSA leaks, the secret yellow dots on your printouts, careless cloud security and Gordon Ramsay’s entanglement with hackers.
Continue reading Smashing Security #024: Reality Winner, Gordon Ramsay and a leaky bucket
The Intercept might have unwittingly helped unmask Reality Winner, a government contractor who allegedly leaked a NSA document about Russian hacking to the news outlet.
David Bisson reports.
Continue reading How The Intercept might have helped unmasked Reality Winner to the NSA
“To hold a citizen incommunicado and indefinitely while awaiting trial for the alleged crime of serving as a journalistic source should outrage us all.” Continue reading Snowden: Prosecuting NSA Leaker Reality Winner Is a ‘Fundamental Threat to the Free Press’