-3

Reality Winner, a former Air Force linguist pleaded guilty in 2018 to leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The leak was illegal, of course, but other than that, what was the public perception about it? Was there something wrong about leaking the information - in the public view?

Did the leak create any harm or any good for any USA politician or for any USA political party?

I am not asking for individual opinions, but the perception of the US public as a whole.

F1Krazy
  • 3,118
  • 3
  • 27
  • 32
Joe Jobs
  • 1,218
  • 1
  • 9
  • 20
  • You have three different questions here, one in the title and two additional questions in the body. In addition, you might well be missing asking a rather important question, which is whether the disclosure risked exposure of foreign sources of intelligence. – David Hammen Dec 23 '21 at 17:10
  • 1
    @David Hammen - Thank you. I don't want to open more questions about this topic and to risk getting more down votes. Do you have any idea how to improve this situation? – Joe Jobs Dec 24 '21 at 01:53

2 Answers2

4

Reality Winner leaked a classified report. The whole point of security classifications is to tell people what can and can't be made public. If something is classified as 'secret' then that means what it says. It doesn't mean "everyone can use their own judgement as to whether to keep this secret or not".

You might think that the report doesn't contain anything that justifies the classification it was given, but from a legal perspective that isn't your judgement to make. Once it's been made by the people who have that authority, everyone else had to work with that or face legal consequences.

PhillS
  • 7,549
  • 2
  • 30
  • 32
  • Of course the leak was illegal. But did anyone detect any reason for why the government didn't release that information on it's own? Was there any journalistic speculation about why such information should have been kept secret? Was any politician advantaged or harmed by the leak? Your answer is correct but my curiosity is about what is wrong with the leak not why it was illegal. For me it is really a complete mistery. – Joe Jobs Dec 22 '21 at 19:24
  • @JoeJobs It seems you're looking for opinions, in which case your question is not suited for this site. I get almost the impression you're just looking for confirmation of your believes - you're critizing this answer basically because it didn't agree with your opinion - which is an even stronger reason to close this question as soon as possible. – Sjoerd Dec 22 '21 at 19:39
  • 1
    @Sjoerd - I do not believe anything about this! I have no idea what to believe about it. It is a mystery for me, that's why I'm asking. I do not ask for other users' opinions. I just ask about the public perception, you can find other questions about public perception, like this one - https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/57624/what-is-the-perception-of-european-parties-in-the-us – Joe Jobs Dec 22 '21 at 19:54
2

Sometimes, it is important to conceal how intelligence is gathered. That's obvious when it comes to the name of a spy in a foreign country, less obvious but no less real when it comes things like cyber-interference. It would still be telling foreign countries what the US is looking at, and by discussing what they found it might imply how they're going about it. For that reason the military and intelligence agencies have a review process about how such data is released. Reality Winner took it upon herself to circumvent the usual rules, which is a violation of the law even if the report should have been released.

Think of it this way. There is a speed limit posted on the road where you travel. Should all motorists decide for themselves if that speed limit makes sense, and if they can break it with impunity? Or should they stick to the rules and (perhaps) write an agry letter to their congressman afterwards?

o.m.
  • 108,520
  • 19
  • 265
  • 393