By Taylor Barnes. Originally published on July 10, 2021. Republished with permission from The Intercept, an award-winning nonprofit news organization dedicated to holding the powerful accountable through fearless, adversarial journalism. Sign up for The Intercept’s Newsletter.
In the latest phase of her record sentence for whistleblowing, former National Security Agency linguist Reality Winner is a short drive to the blazing hot summertime beaches on Texas’s Gulf coast. But she can’t get near them. She can’t even go into the yard of a neighbor who invited her to aid in his beekeeping project.
Convicted under the Espionage Act for having shared a classified document on threats to election security with the media, Winner has been released to home confinement but wears an unwieldy ankle bracelet. It beeps even if she strays too far within her family’s yard.
