re: Reality Winner shows the NSA has learned nothing from Edward Snowden

NSA did change a lot of policies after the Snowden affair. Gen. Alexander (former director of NSA) changed rules about contractors (at least IT people, which Snowden was). He made it so any IT person who accessed classified machines has to have another person sign off whenever the machine is accessed for maintenance. Not only sign off, but the other person stands over their shoulder and watches. This helps protect against the "thumb drive" threat, where one guy takes a thumb drive and downloads gigabytes of classified documents (as Snowden did).

However, this Reality woman was able to print out a top-secret document from her desk in Georgia. Even worse, she did not have authorization to even view this information, yet somehow managed to print it out anyway.

Just because you have a top-secret clearance doesn't give you access to all top-secret information. It seems our government is having a hard time compartmentalizing this stuff. TS/SCI doesn't mean what it used to. Some stuff appears to no longer be "Specially Compartmented Information."

In the case of the document Winner released, it was labeled:

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TOP SECRET/SI/ORCON/REL to USA, FVEY/FISA

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This means:

Top-Secret -- Highest general classification. If you have a TS clearance you can view the document AS LONG as your clearance matches the other markings, which follow.

SI = Special Intelligence, which means it contains communications intercepts (sometimes called COMINT). SI is a "compartment" which you must be cleared for and usually means that your job description must give you the "need to know" before you're allowed to access it. Typically people at NSA would be cleared for SI, whereas someone at CIA might not (depending on their job description). Another such compartment would be HCS (HUMINT) which is "human intelligence" (i.e. spies on the ground). People at CIA would generally be cleared for HUMINT, whereas people at NSA would not because the NSA is not a HUMINT organization. This is a generalization, but you get the idea. My point here is that even if you have a TS clearance, you cannot access compartmented information unless you have clearance for that compartment.

ORCON -- Originator Controlled. This means the originating agency who did the collection has strict control over the information. It cannot be disseminated without their approval.

REL to USA, FVEY -- This means the information was cleared to be shared with our closest "Five Eyes" allies. They include Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

FISA -- This means the FISA court. This probably means that the document contains information intercepted under a FISA warrant.

quote:

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People in their early and mid-20's are still rather idealistic and less mature/responsible.

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It just makes you think that she literally pissed away a bright future for her hatred against Trump or whatever leftist ideal she did it for. A politician, no matter how much you hate him, is not worth losing your freedom over, your pension over and losing the ability to be around family and friends over.

She's only 25 and this shite is going to be following her well into her 40s even if she gets out of prison in her late 30s. That's a good chunk of her lifespan.