On the menu today: The leak of classified information has “left the U.S. relationship with its allies in a state of crisis,” according to Politico. Tracking the leak to its source might be a surprisingly easy task, if U.S. authorities can get a good look — really, a microscopic look — at the documents. Meanwhile, while the headlines scream about Western “special forces operating in Ukraine,” the actual duties of those forces are the non-combat tasks of protecting Western diplomats and embassies in a country at war.
Following the Trail
Back in June 2017, National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner — a name that would likely get rejected by an editor of a spy novel for its heavy-handed irony — was arrested and charged with removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet, The Intercept.
Robert Graham, writing at the blog Errata Security, contended that The Intercept inadvertently helped Winner get caught by posting the documents on the Internet, allowing the authorities to trace which printer had printed out the document, because the document was digitally watermarked:
The problem is that most new printers print nearly invisibly yellow dots that track down exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed. Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document. . . .
The document leaked by the Intercept was from a printer with model number 54, serial number 29535218. The document was printed on May 9, 2017 at 6:20. The NSA almost certainly has a record of who used the printer at that time.
The situation is similar to how Vice outed the location of John McAfee, by publishing JPEG photographs of him with the EXIF GPS coordinates still hidden in the file. Or it’s how PDFs are often redacted by adding a black bar on top of image, leaving the underlying contents still in the file for people to read, such as in this NYTime accident with a Snowden document. Or how opening a Microsoft Office document, then accidentally saving it, leaves fingerprints identifying you behind, as repeatedly happened with the Wikileaks election leaks. These sorts of failures are common with leaks. To fix this yellow-dot problem, use a black-and-white printer, black-and-white scanner, or convert to black-and-white with an image editor.
According to the FBI’s affidavit, it was not a difficult investigation. Winner had emailed The Intercept from her work computer (!) and she confessed when the FBI showed up at her door. Winner served more than four years in prison; in a 2022 interview, she said, “What I did when I broke the law was a political act at a very politically charged time.” She told NBC News she is on probation until November 2024, and remains prohibited from traveling out of southern Texas, and must adhere to a nightly curfew and report any interaction with the media.
Until 2017, the Electronic Frontier Foundation attempted to keep an updated list of which brands and models of printers use the tracking microdots. By 2017, the EFF stopped updating its list, concluding that, “It appears likely that all recent commercial color laser printers print some kind of forensic tracking codes, not necessarily using yellow dots. This is true whether or not those codes are visible to the eye and whether or not the printer models are listed here.”
The current leak that is roiling the U.S. government and its allies involves photos of classified documents, and it is not known whether any digital watermarks can be seen on those photos. The photos show “crumpled documents laid on top of magazines and surrounded by other random objects, such as zip-close bags and Gorilla Glue,” according to one source who talked to CNN.
If you’re going to leak such a massive stash of classified information, you likely know the risks and consequences and maybe know the story of the microdots on the documents Winner leaked. The fact that the documents were photographed and not scanned points to a leaker with some knowledge of past leak investigations. Then again, you might have wanted to crop out the Gorilla Glue or any other potential clues.
Politico reported that some of the documents “appear to have been assembled into a briefing packet by the Joint Staff’s intelligence arm, known as J2, with summaries of global matters pulled from various U.S. intelligence systems. Some of the documents contain markings in the corners that correspond with specific wires with information that appear to be compiled in summary form — a practice often used by individuals inside the government to prepare briefing packets, the former U.S. intelligence analyst said.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that one of the briefers for General Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is the leaker. But I’ll bet all of those briefers are sweating right now, knowing they rank among the top suspects.
Also note that in January of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an update on the investigation into the leak of a draft copy of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and mentioned that, according to the marshal of the Supreme Court, “Investigators continue to review and process some electronic data that has been collected and a few other inquiries remain pending.” It is difficult to believe that investigators would not be able to determine which printer and which computer were used to print out the copy of the draft that ended up in the hands of Politico. The marshal’s report also noted that, “The pandemic and resulting expansion of the ability to work from home, as well as gaps in the Court’s security policies, created an environment where it was too easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks, increasing the risk of both deliberate and accidental disclosures of Court sensitive information.”
What It Means to Have Western Special Forces in Ukraine
This BBC headline is eye-popping: “Ukraine war: Leak shows Western special forces on the ground.” Inside the article, the BBC reports another revelation from the leaked documents: “According to the document, dated 23 March, the UK has the largest contingent of special forces in Ukraine (50), followed by fellow NATO states Latvia (17), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1). The document does not say where the forces are located or what they are doing.”
We’ve seen stories like this before, and they appear to be a little less than meets the eye. The U.S. and its NATO allies are still operating embassies in Kyiv. The U.S. closed its embassy in February 2022 and reopened it in May. For obvious reasons, those embassies need a lot more than the usual security, and these Western governments need to be able to evacuate their diplomatic personnel at a moment’s notice in extremely dangerous circumstances.
In December, British media such as the Daily Mail reported that the U.K. Royal Marines had “taken part in covert operations in Ukraine, as stated by Lieutenant General Robert Magowan.” But it’s worth noting that the Royal Navy told the Daily Mail that, “Royal Marines were deployed to Ukraine to support the UK’s diplomatic presence in the country; they served no combat function”:
In comments published in the Globe and Laurel – the official magazine of the Royal Marines – Lt. Magowan said: “In January this year, 45 Commando Group deployed at short notice — from the depths of a dark, north Norwegian winter, to evacuate the British embassy in Kyiv to Poland. The go-to 999 international emergency force, if you will.” [Editor’s note: 999 is the official emergency number for the United Kingdom, the equivalent of the U.S. 911.]
“Then in April, they returned into the country to re-establish the diplomatic mission, providing protection to critical personnel. During both phases, the commandos supported other discreet operations in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk.”
In this context, it is not surprising that the U.S. and several of its allies have teams of varying sizes operating in Ukraine. Those special operators are unlikely to be taking down Russian soldiers from sniper positions or blowing up Russian tanks; most likely they’re on perpetual alert, ready to get a team of diplomats to a secure airfield or the border if Russian forces somehow break through the lines and advance toward Kyiv.
ADDENDA: Welcome to the presidential race, South Carolina senator Tim Scott. If the Republican Party ever moves on from “angertainment,” you’ll make an extremely promising option.
Going back to 2018, and through 2020, I pointed out that California senator Dianne Feinstein had public incidents of seeming confused about things she had just said and done. It was increasingly clear that age was taking its toll, that Feinstein was not capable of performing the duties of her office anymore, and that her staff was covering for her.
Feinstein has missed 60 votes of the 82 taken in the Senate this year, attempting to recuperate from a case of shingles. Apparently, now that Feinstein’s absence has hindered the Democrats’ ability to confirm judicial nominees, it’s no longer mean, agist, tasteless, or harsh to point out that she’s too darn old to remain in office.