Yesterday The Intercept reported on Top-Secret documents sent to them by an anonymous source. The documents allegedly show how the Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on a U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to over a 100 local election officials.

Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election | The Intercept - June 5 2017

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

 
That source was quickly revealed to be Reality Winner, an NSA contractor working for Pluribus International Corporation, assigned to a U.S. government agency facility in Georgia. Her mother, yesterday told the Daily Mail that her daughter had been a linguist for the U.S. Air Force and can speak middle eastern languages Farsi, Dari and Pashto.

Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document | NBC - Jun 5 2017,

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.

 

Getting Caught

The arrest was made within hours of The Intercept publishing their article. In the police affidavit it states that that FBI was contacted by a federal agency after The Intercept asked them to authenticate the documents. The search warrant and affidavit were both signed on the 3rd of June but the arrest and search didn't happen until the June 5th. The FBI states they caught her becuase the document had been folded and/or creased, suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space. This was followed by an internal audit of the computer system to determine who the person was that searched for and printed off that particular document, which lead them to Reality Winner.

With a few other NSA trick this seems like a pretty plausible investigation. But a a clever Twitter user by the name KnowTheory noticed that 2 out of the 5 Top-Secret documents The Intercept published along with their article had tiny, faint yellow markings on them. These are unique printer marks, a bit like the printers finger print.

Here we have taken a single part of the repeating pattern and rotated it 180 degrees.

Next we input this into a tool provided by the EFF (Electron Frontier Foundation.

DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide

• This guide is part of the Machine Identification Code Technology project. It explains how to read the date, time, and printer serial number from forensic tracking codes in a Xerox DocuColor color laser printout.
• The DocuColor series prints a rectangular grid of 15 by 8 miniscule yellow dots on every color page. The same grid is printed repeatedly over the entire page, but the repetitions of the grid are offset slightly from one another so that each grid is separated from the others.
  
  

Assuming the NSA monitors all activity on their network this evidence only really confirms the FBIs own investigation findings that the document was searched for and printed off on May 9, 2017. It is worth noting the difference between the FBIs investigation and the online investigation. Since The Intercept published their article they've been criticized for revealing the identity of their source by sharing the Top-Secret document, embedded with the tracking dots, with a US federal agency whilst looking for it to be authenticated. I feel this is an unjust criticism as a simple search of the NSA network of who accessed what file and when would give you enough evidence to find your suspect. Also in the FBIs report it mentions that the only example of the document supplied to the US federal agency was a photo taken and send via a mobile phone.

Statement on Justice Department Allegations | The Intercept - June 6 2017

On June 5 The Intercept published a story about a top-secret NSA document that was provided to us completely anonymously. Shortly after the article was posted, the Justice Department announced the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old government contractor in Augusta, Georgia, for transmitting defense information under the Espionage Act.
Although we have no knowledge of the identity of the person who provided us with the document, the U.S. government has told news organizations that Winner was that individual.

While the FBI’s allegations against Winner have been made public through the release of an affidavit and search warrant, which were unsealed at the government’s request, it is important to keep in mind that these documents contain unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the government’s agenda and as such warrant skepticism. Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBI’s claims about how it came to arrest Winner.

 

Reality Winner

It would seem from her social media accounts that she was a firm Bernie supporter and supported the Resistance movement to impeach Donald Trump. She's obviously an intelligent woman that speaks 3 languages, and I believe she thought that what she was doing was admirable and patriotic, which in most cases it would be, but this time she got herself caught up in believing the Deepstates MSM fake news bubble. This essentially programed her into thinking there's a conspiracy between Russia and Trump were real. Enough so that she was even willing to risk her own freedom just so she could become the hero that brought down Trump.

Looking at who Winner follows on Twitter is quite telling. Out of the top ten most recent accounts followed by Winner 3 of them were Snowden, Wikileaks and AnonNews. Interestingly she retweeted Snowden on the February 9th 2017, a few days before she started working for the NSA. Maybe she saw Snowden as a hero and planned to leak all along.

Fake news can be powerful stuff when the wrong people start believing it.

She even received a signed photo of Anderson Cooper from CNN.

It turns out that what she leaked wasn't evidence of collusion but an NSA analysts report outlining the possibility of Russia hacking a company that created the software for voting machines. Again, no actual proof. There really wasn't anything new in these leaks that hasn't already been covered by cyber analysts and the fake MSM.