The new face for espionage is Reality Winner, which sounds like a nickname for someone who has conquered a reality show competition, but it is the young woman's birth name. She's 25-years-old and has spent a number of years in the Air Force before serving her country once again working as a government contractor for NSA.
Reality Winner has top security clearance, so getting her hands on a top secret document seemed to come easy for the young woman working as a linguist in a government building. Winner speaks several Middle-Eastern languages, according to Fox & Friends on Tuesday morning, which would obviously make her an asset to the government with the festering problems of the world today.
Russian hacking
While working for the Pluribus International Corporation, she was assigned to the NSA government agency in Georgia, where she had access to classified documents. One of those documents contained information on the Russian Hacking into the voting system in this nation, which was attempted about a week prior to the 2016 presidential election.
Easy task
While the attempt was made, the document makes no mention of any votes being changed during this hack, according to Fox News. Winner has admitted to printing out that top secret document and using her government clearance to do so. Once she printed it this secret information, she then took it off the printer, folded the paper, and sent it off in an envelope to the online news site called The Intercept, according to Fox & Friends.
Probe was another easy task
It was fairly easy to find out who sent the document to the online publication. The electronic data showed that Reality Winner was one of six people who had sent the document on the printer. Then it was found that Winner had contacted The Intercept by email. The Department of Justice knew who the culprit was about an hour after the publication was leaked online.
Espionage Act
Over the weekend the FBI arrested Winner at home and she admitted to leaking the document. It is easy to see via her social media pages that she's not a Trump supporter. It looks like Bernie Sanders was the candidate she was gunning for leading up to the 2016 election. Now that she's admitted to leaking the document she is charged under the Espionage Act.
Not a creepy-looking character
With those girl-nex-door-looks, it is hard to imagine that Winner is the new face of espionage in this country, but she is. The days of a trench coat wrapped character lurking in the shadows are gone. Today you will find people who look much like yourself as that enemy of the nation, which is basically what Reality Winner has become.
She leaked top secret information using a security clearance level she was trusted with. Now that the probe into these leaks has netted its first suspect, it will be interesting to see what will happen to Winner when it comes time for the punishment to be handed down. It is probably safe to say her high level of government clearance is gone forever!
