Reality Leigh Winner (born December 4, 1991)[5] is an American former enlisted US Air Force member and NSA translator. In 2018, she was given the longest prison sentence ever imposed for unauthorized release of government information to the media[6] after she leaked an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[7] She was sentenced to five years and three months in federal prison.[8]
On June 3, 2017, while employed by the military contractor Pluribus International Corporation, Winner was arrested on suspicion of leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections from the National Security Agency (NSA) to the news website The Intercept. The report indicated that Russian hackers accessed voter registration rolls in the United States with an email phishing operation, though it was unclear whether any changes had been made.[9]
Hacker that hit UK National Lottery in 2016 was sentenced to prison
Concerns were raised that The Intercept's handling of the material exposed her as the source and contributed to her arrest.[10] Twice denied bail, Winner was held at the Lincoln County Jail in Lincolnton, Georgia.[11] On August 23, 2018, Winner was convicted of "removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet" and sentenced to five years and three months in prison as part of a plea deal.[12] She was incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, and released to a transitional facility on June 2, 2021.[13][14][15][16]
A month after being honorably discharged from the Air Force in November 2016, Winner moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she taught at aCrossFit gym and a yoga studio.[17] Winner applied for jobs with NGOs in Afghanistan, hoping to use her Pashto language skills with refugees. However, her search for overseas employment was frustrated by her lack of post-secondary education.[17] Still possessing a top-secret security clearance,[17] Winner was then hired by Pluribus International Corporation, a small firm[17] that provides services under contract to the National Security Agency.[24][25][26][27] On February 13, 2017, Pluribus assigned her to work at Fort Gordon,[28] a U.S. Army post near Augusta, where she had once been stationed while in the Air Force.[17]
In 2019, Tina Satter staged the play Is This A Room, based on the transcript of Winner's interview by the FBI.[73][74][75] Is This A Room was given its Dutch premiere at the 2019 Noorderzon Festival in Groningen in the Netherlands,[76] and was further presented in New York City at the Vineyard Theatre later that year.[77] Is This A Room ran on Broadway at the Lyceum Theater, opening on October 10, 2021 and closing November 27.[78] Winner was not involved with the production during its initial Off-Broadway run and was unable to see the Broadway production due to still being under house arrest, but spoke with the creative team extensively following her release from prison and video-called into the opening night performance's curtain call.[79] A film adaptation of Is This A Room was announced to be in development in June 2022, with Sydney Sweeney attached to play Reality Winner alongside Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis. Tina Satter and James Paul Dallas adapted the script, with Satter directing in her feature debut.[80] The film, Reality, will premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2023.[81]
Anwar Batson, 29, of London, has been sentenced for fraud and four violations under the Computer Misuse Act of 1990. The man was arrested in May 2017 and initially denied any involvement, claiming that he had been a victim of trolls and hackers, but later pleaded guilty after investigators found on his devices conversations between him and other members of the conspiracy.
The names Gary McKinnon (Ledingham and Mills 2015) and Laurie Love (McCoogan 2016) most famously exemplify the difficulties that arise when autistic people get embroiled in accusations of hacking. Both men respectively faced, and are facing, very long prison sentences in the USA because of allegedly hacking into various secure computer systems e.g. Federal Reserve, US Army and NASA.
Computer-related fraud includes many online swindles that involve false or misleading promises of love and companionship ( catphishing), property (through inheritance scams), and money and wealth (through lottery scams, investment fraud, inheritance scams, etc.). The ultimate goal of these scams is to trick the victim into revealing or otherwise providing personal information and/or funds to the perpetrator (a form of social engineering fraud). This tactic, as the name implies, uses social engineering (a term popularized by a US hacker, Kevin Mitnick), the practice "of manipulating, deceiving, influencing, or tricking individuals into divulging confidential information or performing acts that will benefit the social engineer in some way" (Maras, 2014, p. 141).
In 2017, Latoya Nugent, a human rights activist, was charged with and arrested for violating Section 9 of Jamaica's Cybercrimes Act of 2015, for posting the names of perpetrators of sexual violence on social media. The charges against her were subsequently withdrawn. This section of the law, which proscribes online malicious communications, has been criticized for unjustifiably restricting freedom of expression (Barclay, 2017). A similarly worded section of a law in Kenya (Section 29 of the Kenya Information and Communication Act) was repealed because it was viewed by a national court as unconstitutional due to its vague and imprecise language and its lack of clarity on the types of expression (or speech) that would be considered illegal under the Act ( Geoffrey Andare v Attorney General & 2 others, 2016).
Colin Hodgson, 61, from Colchester, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months imprisonment on Friday (January 5), after it came to light that he had sexually assaulted a girl from the age of 18 months to three years old.
Sylvester and Lewis were both sentenced in October 2016 to life in prison, while his girlfriend, Elisha Francois, was jailed for 32 months in May 2016 after admitting perverting the course of justice. 2ff7e9595c
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