Reality Winner's Alleged Reality
 |
She knew she was in hot water when she contacted her folks in Texas some seven months later to report that she had been arrested by the FBI and couldn't really talk it up.
It is alleged that young Ms Winner, who was working for the defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation printed an NSA document which entailed the Russian hacking of a voting equipment vendor in Florida with subsequent attempts at breaching the local election systems til late in the actual voting there. This document is further alleged to have been provided to individuals outside of the agency.
The young lady was on social media expressing hate and discontent over recent political developments and these were likely contributory to the alleged compromise of the NSA documents.
Her family remains confused regarding the details and do not appear to understand the nature of technical breach of security and document compromise as alleged in the case before Ms Winner.
It seems that her downfall was found on those pages from the NSA's printers — which included invisible tracking dots known as a DocuColor pattern which simply is an encoded grid containing information regarding the printer and when it was used. The code on the leaked documents revealed the date and time of printing as well as the printer's serial number.
The authorities used this information to track her down then charge her with leaking a classified NSA report by following the hidden prints.
Gee, I believe that using company resources to divulge company resources is somewhat backward thinking. At the most it's pretty unsophisticated skullduggery. Given the other idiocy in social media allegedly attributed to this person such as tweeting to the Iranians how the people of the US are "with you" if you are attacked by the government ... it is surprising to me how she ever qualified for enough security clearance to gain access to sensitive documents anyway.
I attribute this entire debacle to the poor management we have come to know in the security agencies in general.