One possible answer is that Witch Hunts are emotion driven, and have
little to do with sensibility.
Carl Jarvis
On 5/11/18, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have a response to this article which I'll place at its end.
Miriam
Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service -
but Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail
By James Risen, The Intercept
10 May 18
Press coverage of Russian intelligence attempts to hack into U.S. voting
systems during the 2016 election played an important role in alerting state
elections officials to the threat because government warnings were
inadequate, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report
released this week.
The most detailed such news story, based on a classified National Security
Agency document, appeared in The Intercept last June. A former NSA
contractor, Reality Winner, has been charged under the Espionage Act for
allegedly leaking a top-secret document describing the Russian attempt to
penetrate voting software. The Intercept received the document featured in
its June 5, 2017 Russian hacking story anonymously. (This reporter is the
director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, a division of The Intercept's
nonprofit parent company, First Look Media Works, which has contributed
funds to Winner's defense.)
In implicitly conceding the impact of The Intercept's story, as well as
other coverage, the new Senate report detailing the committee's
investigation of Russian election meddling makes the case that the leak
helped state officials around the nation begin to address the threat of
Russian hacking into American voting systems. It is a remarkable and
paradoxical assertion from a government that has used the full force of the
law to pursue Winner for allegedly sharing the document with a news
organization. The committee's conclusions offer strong support for the
argument that disclosing the document was in the public interest.
The Senate report states that Russian attempts to target U.S. voting
infrastructure began "at least as early as 2014" and continued through the
2016 election. The Intercept story and others published earlier may have
provided a wake-up call to state and federal officials about their
vulnerability to the Russian cyber campaign. The Senate report says that
"many state election officials reported hearing for the first time about
the
Russian attempts to scan and penetrate state systems from the press or from
the public Committee hearing on June 21, 2017." The Intercept story ran
less
than three weeks before that hearing.
The report notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI
issued
alerts that were "limited in substance and distribution" in the summer and
fall of 2016. "States understood there was a cyber threat but did not
appreciate the scope, seriousness or implication of the particular threat
they were facing," according to the report. "The Committee found that DHS's
initial response was inadequate to counter the threat," the report says.
The
DHS's notifications in the summer of 2016, coupled with a public statement
by the DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in
October 2016, "were not sufficient warning."
Although the DHS provided warning to IT staff in the fall of 2016,
notifications to state election officials were delayed by nearly a year. It
wasn't until September 2017 - "and only under significant pressure from
this
Committee and others"- that the DHS told chief election officials in
targeted states about "the scanning activity and other attacks and the
actor
behind them," according to the report.
Prodded by the Senate committee and greater public awareness of the threat,
the DHS is now working more effectively with state election officials, the
report says.
A so-called Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center
has been established to share information with state and local election
officials. The DHS has also hosted a classified briefing for state chief
election officials and is working to provide security clearances for those
officials.
Among the recommendations of the Senate committee's report is a call for
the
intelligence community to improve information-sharing on threats and to
"put
a high priority on attributing cyberattacks both quickly and accurately."
It
adds that the DHS "must create clear channels of communication between the
federal government and appropriate officials at the state and local
levels."
It also sees a role for the media in disseminating information about such
threats. "Election experts, security officials, cybersecurity experts, and
the media should develop a common set of precise and well-defined election
security terms to improve communication," the report notes.
Although other news outlets reported on threats of Russian intrusion into
the U.S. elections system, The Intercept's June 2017 story was distinctive
in that it relied on government information not authorized for public
release. The New York Times referred to The Intercept's reporting in its
own
coverage of the Senate report, noting that a "National Security Agency
analysis leaked last June concluded that Russian military intelligence
launched a cyberattack on at least one maker of electronic voting equipment
during the 2016 campaign, and sent so-called spear-phishing emails days
before the general election to 122 local government officials, apparently
customers of the manufacturer. The emails concealed a computer script that,
when clicked on, 'very likely' downloaded a program from an external server
that gave the intruders prolonged access to election computers or allowed
them to search for valuable data."
The government appears to recognize that The Intercept's story played a
critical role in warning American elections officials about the threat, yet
the Senate report comes at a time when the Trump administration has
continued to take a draconian approach in its prosecution of Reality
Winner.
Prosecutors have successfully pushed to have her denied bail and have
sought
to argue that she caused significant damage to national security. While
senior government officials like former CIA Director David Petraeus have
been given what amount to slaps on the wrist in leak cases, Winner remains
incarcerated even as the Senate is effectively lauding the leak for which
she is charged.
Reality Winner's mother, Billie Jean Winner Davis, was critical of the
government for jailing her daughter for actions that the Senate now
implicitly applauds. "The fact that my daughter Reality Winner has been
jailed for nearly a year, accused of doing what the committee is indicating
DHS should have done but would not do, is hard to deal with," she said.
"Why
would someone accused of providing concrete proof of a cyberattack on our
election, when our government would not, be condemned and called a traitor
to the country? Would this committee and DHS have taken the measures cited
if the NSA document had not been released? Would the Russia investigation
continue at all if this information had not been released to the American
people?"
She added that it made no sense that such information that should have been
given to the American public was considered classified.
"There's the classification issue and lack of communication from our
intelligence agencies to Congress," she said. "Should the information
regarding the Russian cyberattack on our election systems have been
classified? Now that the information has been released and reviewed, does
it
still warrant classified status? Reality Winner's defense is restricted
from
referencing or reviewing the information and document she is accused of
releasing because this document remains classified. Why? Is this document
still classified as a means to ensure Reality Winner and her legal team
cannot defend her against the espionage charges?"
My thoughts: First, James Risen has a rather different view of Russiagate
than Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. Their debate, or a good part of it
was on one of the Intercepted podcasts. There are many people who feel that
the author of the original story about the leaked documents, mishandled
the
secrecy regarding the identity of the leaker, which is why Reality Wynnner
was arrested. But aside from all that, Risen's point is well taken. If the
committee thinks that this information is so valuable, why is the person
who
leaked it, in prison?
