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A comment on FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent leaking, immediately leaked. Parent comment

Re:FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent leak... by ceejayoz on Thursday October 14, 2021 @02:57PM (#28868433)
"Both journalists and security experts have suggested that The Intercept's handling of the reporting, which included publishing the documents unredacted and including the printer tracking dots, was used to identify Winner as the leaker."
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Re:FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent leak... by yuliyp on Friday October 15, 2021 @12:20PM (#28879486)
Yeah it's possible that was it, but also "Through an internal audit, the NSA determined that Winner was one of six workers who had accessed the particular documents on its classified system".

The lesson to take away is that metadata of all kinds is powerful. Even if The Intercept had just provided paraphrases to the NSA it might have still given away Reality Winner's identity.

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Re:FB seals off some internal message boards to prevent leak... by HolidayguyNOR on Friday October 15, 2021 @01:39AM (#28874681)
I mean sure, it's possible that the dots were available and made the investigation much easier, but it sounds like they would have probably caught her regardless. Especially considering her computer had connected to The Intercept. Amazingly bad opsec on her part, not to mention that she didn't remove the tracking dots herself.
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