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by: Nicole CarrUpdated: Sep 7, 2017 - 10:15 PM

RICHMOND COUNTY, Ga. - The Georgia contractor indicted on charges she leaked Russian election intelligence info to the media is asking the court to throw out her interrogation statements.

Reality Winners defense filed a motion to suppress the evidence last week, claiming the contractor was restrained in her home prior to arrest, and not read her Miranda rights.

Winner, 25, is in jail and awaiting trial to face the charge of willful retention and transmission of national defense information. Shes accused of removing classified material from an Augusta government facility where she worked and mailing it to an online news outlet.

Winner pleaded not guilty in federal court in Augusta on June 6.

Earlier that day, Channel 2s Nicole Carr got an exclusive look inside the room where Winner was interrogated, after the womans parents invited the crew inside the home. They were concerned Winner had no chance at a fair trial due to the high-profile nature of the charges and widespread threats.

Channel 2 legal analyst Esther Panitch weighed in on the motion.

If shes more concerned about the court of public opinion, well then, shes probably lost that argument, Panitch said. If shes more concerned with what her punishment will be if shes convicted, or that shes convicted at all, this is the route she needs to take.

WINNERS SIDE OF THE STORY

For the first time, Winner explains what happened inside her home prior to her June 3arrest.Newly filed court documents indicate the woman was surrounded by nearly a dozen armed FBI agents during a raid at her house.

Winner explained that she returned home from the grocery store and was eventually asked to enter that 7 foot by 9 foot room in the back of her home. Winner says she told the armed agents it was creepy and weird and she did not like to go back there.

Winner goes on to say the interrogation continued with agents blocking the doorway.

According to the declaration she submitted to the court, at one point Winner explained the following:

I specifically told law enforcement that whatever we were using had already been compromised, and that this report was just going to be like a one drop in the bucket.

She was told she was the most likely candidate of the document leak, and this was her opportunity to tell the truth. At the same time, Winner says she was told by the agents that she likely just made a mistake, and she had a good career. If shed leak the document for a political reason, Winner said she was told by the agents that theyd feel better that they didnt have a real serious problem on their hands."

Winner would eventually be directed to stand in her front yard. She by two female agents who arrived after the interrogation, she said.

Her defense argued that even though Winner wasnt handcuffed during the interrogation, she was restrained by heavy presence of armed agents.

The governments burden is to prove the statement was voluntarily and knowingly given, and it wasnt coerced in any way, Panitch explained.

Panitch explained that prosecutors will argue Winner was in the comfort of her own home and free to leave or refuse to answer the questions, but the circumstances may make that a hard argument.

If youre surrounded by armed agents and theyre not going to let you walk around in your house alone because theyre executing a search warrant, do you really feel like youre able to leave? Panitch asked. I would challenge most people to try and get up and leave that situation and see how comfortable you would feel.

NEW TRIAL DATE

Theres no published timetable on when the court will hear the suppression motion in an evidentiary hearing.

Meanwhile, Winner was originally scheduled to begin trial in late October, but the court has granted the defense more time to review classified documents. Its a challenging task considering the number of security clearances the growing team is having to land in a limited time period.

The new trial date is set for March 19, and will set the stage for leaker tolerance under the Trump administration.

These are real issues that need to be dealt with and we will see the current administrations policies going forward, using this case as an example, Panitch said.

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Alleged NSA leaker wants court to throw out evidence - WSB Atlanta

NSA headquarters

WASHINGTON: The National Security Agency, which can go for ten years without a contract protest, currently faces three, slowing the agencys ability to issue new contracts.

We are sitting on three of them right now. Used to be you could go a decade without one, let alone sitting on three in one year,Charlie Stein, of the NSAs wonderfully named Maryland Procurement Office, told about 100 audience members at the INSA and AFCEA intelligence conference today.

For the companies involved, Stein did not sound terribly sympathetic and offered a fact that must elicit enormous envy from his colleagues in Defense Department acquisition. Ican say that we have not lost one yet, and we dont intend to.

So whats the cause of this sudden spate of protests, especially one involving an agency that normally works very closely and quietly with its contractors, often for a very long time?

Stein says they now have a junior workforce, one that isnt as adept at crossing every T and dotting every i. Combine that with fact that, as a result of the protests, their attorneys are tied up dealing with protests so they dont have time to make sure new deals are free of protestable issues.

Al Munson, first head of acquisition for the Director of National Intelligence, who appeared on the panel with Stein, notes in a recent paper for the Potomac Institute that bid protests were extremely rare, and success in causing a source selection decision to be overturned were even much rarer in the past. This has multiple effects on intelligence acquisition.

Munson writes that the government has reduced the periods within the competitive process wherein communication with potential competitors can occur and has reduced the quality of those communications. This has the effect of reducing the clarity and increasing the ambiguity in the bidders understanding of the governments needs, and therefore, in the responsiveness of the bids to those needs. Munson believes this can lead to an overly optimistic (read: unrealistic) cost proposal. And once a protest is lodged, a program can be delayed years while the issues are resolved.

We wont mention the Air Forces tanker fiasco, but you can read about it here.

Link:
Three Contract Protests Lodged Against NSA! - Breaking Defense

The ShadowBrokers, a group that for more than a year has been leaking documents they claim were taken from the National Security Agency, have resurfaced once again.

"Missing theshadowbrokers? If someone is paying then theshadowbrokers is playing," they wrote in a blog post sent Wednesday.

In the group's latest missive, the ShadowBrokers announced that they will now leak documents twice a month and will continue to double the cost to access the leaks each release. According to the blog post, written in the group's trademarkbroken English, "September dumps is being exploits."

Between the two, the systems held hostage by the ransom seeking malware totaled in the hundreds of thousands, including taking out several British hospitals, shipping and pharmaceutical giants and other major global companies.

The Brokers first emerged last summer and have tried various schemes to sell the NSA documents, which appear to be authentic but have not been confirmed by the government. Those documents includedtools that could circumvent cybersecurity hardware and breach Windows systems.

The group has tried auctioning the documents, selling them a la carte, crowdfunding a bulk release and, most recently, as a subscription leak service the Brokers have likened to a "wine of the month club."

The subscription service has generated skepticism in the cybersecurity community. The pricing system appears to be over the top the price doubles every release, leaving an upcoming October release costing more than $3.8 million, well above the market value of sophisticated hacking tools for products sent sight unseen.

There is little information about what files, if any, have actually been released to justify those prices. In their latest statement, the ShadowBrokers gave some clue, including a manual to a product they say was released in a prior leak UNITEDRAKE, described as a "fully extensible remote collection system designed for Windows targets."

Read the rest here:
ShadowBrokers accelerating NSA leaks to twice a month - The Hill

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as both the director of the NSA and the CIA, said Monday that some of President Trumps rhetoric on North Korea could lead to great danger.

A very tough, but a very precise statement, Hayden told CNNs New Day, referring to the statementSecretary of Defense James MattisJames Norman MattisThis week: Harvey aid at top of long to-do list as Congress returns Week ahead in defense: Senators pick up work on defense bill | Briefings on North Korea, Afghan troop surge Chinese Ambassador: China will never allow chaos and war on the Korean Peninsula MORE made on Sunday afterNorth Korea saidthat it successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that can be placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Which is a little bit different than some of the things the president has been allowing himself to say, Alisyn, which have been very tough, but very imprecise, and that could lead to great danger, Hayden told host Alisyn Camerota.

Secretary Mattis had very strong language, but it was about a North Korean threat, not a North Korean capability, Hayden explained.

In other words, Alisyn, I think he was trying to make a distinction between were willing to pre-empt an imminent threat from North Korea but were not willing, its not our policy at least not yet, to conduct a preventive war to prevent the North Koreans from acquiring that kind of capability.

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Former CIA, NSA head: Trump's tough N. Korea talk 'could lead to ... - The Hill

While condemning the leak of classified information, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee today said that because a secret NSA document was posted online yesterday "we now have verified information" showing that Russian intelligence services were in fact behind last year's cyber-assault on the U.S. election.

"In any other circumstances this would be an earthquake," but because of "everything" going on in Washington it is a matter that has not received the attention it deserves, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said at the start of a committee hearing. "This was Russia ... this was an international attempt to impact the elections of the United States of America."

Her comments come one day after the FBI arrested a 25-year-old government contractor, Reality Winner of Augusta, Georgia, for allegedly leaking the document to reporters at the online publication The Intercept.

The document, posted online just hours before the announcement of Winner's arrest, laid out in stark detail how Russian hackers allegedly "executed cyber espionage operations" against outside vendors dealing with voter-related information.

It's unclear exactly why Winner allegedly searched for secret documents related to the election, printed out a highly-classified NSA document and then mailed it to a media outlet. But court documents may offer a glimpse.

In late March, Winner allegedly used a Gmail account to contact The Intercept, and she "appeared to request transcripts of a podcast," according to court documents.

Little more than a week earlier, The Intercept hosted a podcast online looking at, among other things, the public outcry over Russia's alleged collusion with associates of President Donald Trump and the Kremlin's alleged interference in last year's presidential election.

Host Jeremy Scahill said "there is a tremendous amount of hysterics" and "a lot of premature conclusions being drawn around all of this Russia stuff," but "there's not a lot of hard evidence to back it up."

As a guest on the podcast, Intercept reporter Glenn Greenwald agreed, saying that while "it's very possible" Russia was behind election-related hacks last year, "we still haven't seen any evidence for it."

At the Senate hearing today, McCaskill said the NSA document allegedly leaked by Winner now offers such evidence, and she pressed the hearing's witness, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, to make sure his department takes appropriate steps to protect voting-related systems in the future.

Kelly said he couldn't confirm or deny any specific information "about what actually took place" last year, particularly because the intelligence behind it is so highly classified.

In January, the U.S. intelligence community issued a report calling Russia's alleged meddling in last year's presidential campaign "a significant escalation" of efforts "to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," the report said. "We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help [Donald] Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied those conclusions and President Donald Trump and others in his administration have similarly questioned whether Russia was truly behind last year's hack of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent attempts to infiltrate election-related systems.

Speaking in Washington last month, however, the NSA's recently-departed deputy director wholly rejected such skepticism, insisting there is "no question it was the Russians."

"NSA had a huge role in making that determination," the former deputy director of the agency, Richard Ledgett, said. "There is no question that thats what it was. I cant lay out for you all of the reasons for that, because there's a lot of really sensitive sources that led to that, but it was definitely the Russians."

Ledgett said such conclusions are based on "a variety of different good sources of information."

"It's more than just looking at the code. It's more than just looking at the targets. It's more than looking at the tactics and the techniques and procedures," and U.S. agencies "have a really good ability to do attribution" thanks to the intelligence work of both the U.S. government and allies around the world, he said.

Ledgett, who stepped down from the NSA in April, was speaking at Georgetown Law Schools annual Cybersecurity Law Institute.

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Leaked NSA document is proof of Russian election hacking, top ...