NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Released to Home Confinement

Reality Winner, a former Air Force translator and government contractor who blew the whistle on attempted Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election has been released from a US prison to finish her sentence at home with her family.

Winner – recipient of a Special Recognition Award from Blueprint for Free Speech – was charged under the notorious US Espionage Act and sentenced to 63 months in prison in 2018. Hers is the longest-ever sentence meted out to a federal whistleblower in a US civilian court.

Her lawyer, Alison Grinter Allen, announced the news on twitter in a statement that said Winner and her family are working to “heal the trauma of incarceration and build back the years lost.” She added that Winner had been released on grounds of “exemplary behaviour”, despite a vociferous campaign in her defence.

Reality Winner had been charged for taking a report about a 2016 Russian military intelligence cyberattack from the National Security Agency facility where she worked as a contractor and sending it to the Intercept. Winner was arrested shortly after The Intercept’s story was published in June 2017.

The controversy about the degree to which the publication failed in their duty towards Winner as a source has been the subject of long standing controversy. First Look Media, the Intercept’s parent company, made a financial contribution to Winner’s legal defence.

Winner is a decorated cryptolinguist whose revelations let state election officials learn about Russian-linked phishing attacks on electoral infrastructure, allowing them to better protect themselves from interference. The information was finally published fully unredacted in the July 2018 report of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller.

Writing in The Intercept in 2018, Reality’s mother Billie Winner-Davis said she was frustrated that her daughter paid a price for her courage while others linked to the attempt to influence the election were not punished:

“My daughter was sentenced to five years in prison for releasing a single document from the National Security Agency with proof of a threat to our voting system, when no one else would give the public the truth.”

While a documentary based on the case, US versus Reality Winner premiered at SXSW earlier this year, Winner herself, is barred from speaking to the media.

Her lawyer, Alison Grinter, said Reality Winner's family was able to drive her from prison to a halfway house in San Antonio on 2 June. She is currently in home confinement with an ankle monitor to ensure she does not go outside until her sentence ends in November.