Reality Winner, NSA contractor in leak case, out of prison

As of today, the intercept still has not provided any public accounting of their screw up.

Important part, not in the headline:<p>&gt; moved to home confinement and remains in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons

Daniel Ellsberg recently turned 90 and is risking prison releasing previously-undisclosed documents.<p>Edit: Recent interview <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.democracynow.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;6&#x2F;14&#x2F;daniel_ellsberg_on_whistleblowers_julian_assange" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.democracynow.org&#x2F;2021&#x2F;6&#x2F;14&#x2F;daniel_ellsberg_on_wh...</a>

There&#x27;s a play &quot;Is This A Room&quot; based on the transcript of her arrest - I haven&#x27;t seen it but This American Life has an excerpt: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;696&#x2F;low-hum-of-menace&#x2F;act-two-11" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thisamericanlife.org&#x2F;696&#x2F;low-hum-of-menace&#x2F;act-t...</a>. For some reason I found it really unsettling.

&gt; Her lawyer, Alison Grinter Allen, said in a statement that Winner and her family are working to “heal the trauma of incarceration and build back the years lost.”<p>She looks tough in the photo from the article, but I remember back when she was arrested she looked so young and innocent [1]. I wonder how prison has changed&#x2F;traumatized her. Her sentence always seemed a little excessive to me.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chron.com&#x2F;national&#x2F;slideshow&#x2F;10-things-to-know-about-Reality-Winner-146242.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chron.com&#x2F;national&#x2F;slideshow&#x2F;10-things-to-know-a...</a>

I realize this is off topic, but I just have to say… that is a pretty awesome name.<p>One joke we had in grad school is great roboticists had interesting names… one of my favorite examples was Howie Choset (How he choose it). One of the many interesting&#x2F;colorful folk I have met on my journey.<p>I sometimes wonder that by having an “unusual name”, by making you “stand out”, further promotes you to deliberately stand out.

Is &quot;pleaded guilty&quot; correct, grammatically?<p>Would it not instead be written as &quot;pled guilty&quot; in that article?

It doesn&#x27;t seem like this was a proper whistle blower case. She did not use good judgement here, in my opinion.<p>But her punishment was overly harsh. Especially if you consider how much the federal government leaks, and how few people are prosecuted for it, and how little harm it does in most cases.<p>She was made an example of precisely because she was a low-level employee with no power or connections. Which is obviously wrong on a very deep level. And that&#x27;s the big story here.

I&#x27;m surprised there is more noise about her story than about the content of the leak. &quot;Is it fair to prosecute her? Was she wrong? Should there be laws to make this information public to the people?&quot; Shouldn&#x27;t the question be: What about the content of the leak?<p>Same thing with Snowden. The question turns from how is the government spying on you, to is it fair to prosecute him? Is he a hero? Should he be pardoned? What about &quot;is the government still spying? Did we shut down the program?&quot;<p>I think this is a perfect example of information control.

There was a good HN thread about the printer surveillance tech that got Reality busted. Here it is: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14494818" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14494818</a>

Where is the line, and more importantly who decides, between laws to protect secret documents, and the right of the public to know of wrongdoing?

&quot;when she printed a classified report and left the building with it tucked into her pantyhose&quot;<p>She got off too easy.

I’d like to say I’m being glib here, but doesn’t the fact that the NSA gives someone named Reality Winner a clearance kind of put the blame on them for this one?<p>You hire a flake, you’re gonna have to deal with the fallout.

As someone who has been a big fan of Wikileaks, something about this story has always felt off to me - like this is some sort of state disinfo op rather than a &#x27;real&#x27; leak.<p>The revelations from Winner&#x27;s leak didn&#x27;t seem subversive - rather they seemed to bolster arguments for RussiaGate and the new digital cold war - both of which were growing DNC talking points.<p>Does anyone else feel the same way? Or do I just have too much tinfoil on my head?