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Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#151

Post by dangoor »

braderhart wrote: post #89
tanderson92 wrote: post #5

Have we learned nothing about the NSA's tactics? The Intercept publishes reporting that they would rather not have been printed, and the very day the DOJ unseals charges where they try to say they learned about the leak from a paper crease from what can be reasonably inferred to be The Intercept. Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept (in contradiction with their recomm…

Seriously seems like this was a whistleblower with a legitimate concern for the American people. Maybe she was careless on purpose. If you know you are going to get caught, might as well make your trail obvious so that you can claim that you are a whistleblower.

How is that she was a whistleblower? The US government wasn't breaking any laws and, for all we know, the evidence she had may be part of the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#152

Post by florean »

tanderson92 wrote: post #36
lotso wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone would agree the leaker should be more cautious, but The Intercept should also know best practices too around printed materials too.

I think everyone would agree with that. The question then becomes: did The Intercept not follow best practices here? Once again, there is no evidence and any "yes" answer relies on trusting the NSA/DOJ.

They did not. They told a government contractor that the document had been printed and mailed from Augusta, GA, who then reported it to the government. That's what got her, microdots or not.

You can read the search warrant at https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/a-federal-government..., which is more complete than the arrest warrant. Just read paragraphs 12-19, which cover the relevant probable cause. If the FBI don't know how it leaked (printed) and from where (Winner's home town), the case becomes extremely difficult. Instead, they had so much that she just confessed when they showed up.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#153

Post by Shivetya »

throwaway-1209 wrote: post #24

Nah. Only 6 people have printed the doc and of those only one could be found in phone call metadata making a call to a press related contact. I don't know what the leaker was thinking. And in the end even this leak doesn't contain any evidence of anything that would even tie it to Russia, let alone GRU. On the internet no one knows you're a dog. So she will get 10 years in the slammer for nothing.

go read her social postings, she wasn't thinking clearly as its pretty obvious she was acting irrational hatred of the current administration. people like this are easy to spot, how in the hell do they get clearance? how do they keep it?

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#154

Post by yohui »

tanderson92 wrote: post #144
yohui wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think tanderson92 is claiming that the source was actually identified via other methods, so the material provided by the Intercept played no role in identifying the source. Hence the Intercept did not accidentally reveal their source but is being portrayed as such in order to discourage people from leaking to them. Personally, while that scenario doesn't sound impossible I think the likelihood is being overstated d…

I don't make any particular claim about how the government identified the source. They also have access logs and apparently only 6 people accessed the document. I do think that The Intercept bungled this in not stripping the watermarks; I don't shield them from criticism even though I value their reporting. But I do not necessarily accept the government's version of events. Parallel construction is not unheard-of.

> I don't make any particular claim about how the government identified the source. They also have access logs and apparently only 6 people accessed the document.

Thanks for pointing that out. I've edited it to simply say "via other methods", especially since other comments say the source did not directly send the info via her work email.

> I do think that The Intercept bungled this in not stripping the watermarks; I don't shield them from criticism even though I value their reporting. But I do not necessarily accept the government's version of events. Parallel construction is not unheard-of.

If the Intercept did make the mistakes they apparently made (if not they're free to deny it), does it matter whether or not the parallel construction theory is true?

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#155

Post by florean »

ScottBurson wrote: post #149
florean wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no evidence that it was The Intercept's actions that caused her to be found. There's plenty of evidence The Intercept's actions caused her to be found. It's documented in the FBI's affidavits for arrest and search warrants. https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/a-federal-government... To wit: 'The Reporter told the Contractor that the Reporter had received the documents through the mail, and they were pos…

Yes, but there were only six who printed it to begin with. I'm inclined to agree that the Intercept shouldn't have shared that information with the contractor, but it's not at all clear that the leaker wouldn't have been found anyway.

How does the FBI know it was printed? Because the Intercept told them. It could have been screenshots from a phone. It could have been downloaded from some hack. The number of people that viewed a document is going to be a superset of the number of people that viewed and printed a document. And if they're worried someone could access the report outside of their controls, then the set gets even larger. The Intercept only needed to disclose some content and the intelligence report number to get confirmation. Instead, they gave away how they got the report (printed), narrowing it to a set of six, and then they gave away the postmark, narrowing to a set of one. The Intercept burned their source.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#156

Post by florean »

tanderson92 wrote: post #145
florean wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about the FBI, not the NSA, and court documents. > Meanwhile the alleged leaker allegedly used her work computer to contact The Intercept. This really should be ignored. The FBI included it as probable cause for their search and arrest warrants, but she had e-mailed them asking for a podcast transcript months earlier. As far as leaking, she mailed the document to them and had no electronic communication…

> We're talking about the FBI, not the NSA, and court documents. It's called parallel construction; it has happened before and it will happen again. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...

Why do they need parallel construction when The Intercept narrowed it to a single person (printed and lives in Augusta, GA)? I'm going to restrict my conversation on this topic to the reporting and sworn testimony.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#157

Post by tanderson92 »

florean wrote: post #156
tanderson92 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're talking about the FBI, not the NSA, and court documents. It's called parallel construction; it has happened before and it will happen again. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130...

Why do they need parallel construction when The Intercept narrowed it to a single person (printed and lives in Augusta, GA)? I'm going to restrict my conversation on this topic to the reporting and sworn testimony.

I'm not shielding The Intercept from criticism. But the reporting is based on what the DOJ wanted released and I do not share your trust in what they say.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#158

Post by mi100hael »

linkregister wrote: post #137

What I find interesting is that the email from the Gmail account on the work computer was able to be intercepted and logged. What mechanism might they have used, an SSL proxy with a pre-loaded root certificate? How long is this data logged?

Yes, that's pretty standard fare for a corporate firewall/proxy. Most configurations don't log everything, just traffic matching particular patterns or hosts. But when it's the NSA, who knows how much they retain.

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#159

Post by florean »

chakalakasp wrote: post #16

Any article that ends with a yes/no question is always answered with "no". This one is no exception. Print classified info out at work on work printers from a monitored work computer you are logged into and said info ends up with reporters days later? Reporters you communicated with over gmail ?! This person isn't exactly an infosec genius. Which, I mean, isn't a sin or anything, but when you know the organization yo…

She didn't communicate with any reporters over Gmail. She e-mailed The Intercept asking for a podcast transcript months ago and again to confirm her account. In fact, she had no electronic correspondence of any kind regarding the leaks (that we know of).

I recommend reading the search warrant application, paragraphs 12-19. It's the second document in this BuzzFeed story: https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/a-federal-government...

Re: Did the Intercept bungle the NSA leak?

#160

Post by ucaetano »

kharms wrote: post #107
ucaetano wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of evidence: https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/how-a-few-yellow-do... Massive incompetence and amateurish stuff on part of the leaker and The Intercept. Yellow dots have been known for ages.

Do you think the NSA wouldn't have checked access logs and the emails if not for the scan? The difference isn't between getting caught vs. not, it's between getting caught in days vs weeks.

But also caught with irrefutable proof. The printer and job time can be tracked back to her precisely. With that in hand, there is absolutely no doubt that leak came from her (she intentionally shared), or through her (she printed, but someone else shared, with or without her knowledge).
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