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 WASHINGTON — When the news broke that Reality Winner, a 25-year-old NSA contractor with an apparently heavy social media presence, had been charged with leaking a classified document to reporters, many people wondered: How does someone so young have a such a top-level security clearance? 
 
 It’s actually very common. 
 
 "The vast majority of people who do the National Security Agency’s intercept work, who translate and analyze — most of them are fresh out of high school," said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian who has written about the NSA. "There are thousands and thousands of 18 to 21-year-olds doing critically important and secret work around the world." 
 
 Related: Feds Arrest NSA Contractor in Leak of Top Secret Russia Document 
 
 The NSA is a military intelligence agency, and many of the people who work on the front lines of intelligence gathering in the military are young enlisted personnel. If they are eavesdropping on anyone from a terrorist in Afghanistan to a Russian colonel, they need a very high security clearance. The equipment, the methods, the words they hear — are all highly classified. 
 
 So it was that Winner, who served in the Air Force from 2010 until December 2016, found her way to a job as a contractor at an NSA facility in Georgia. A Cryptologic Language Analyst for the Air Force, she was fluent in the languages of Afghanistan. She was arrested at her home Saturday for allegedly leaking a document about Russian hacking of U.S. electoral systems that was published in a story by The Intercept on Monday afternoon. 
 
 The issue that Winner’s arrest highlights is not her age, current and former intelligence officials say — it is what they perceive as a cultural shift that has led a small but growing subset of spy agency employees to break the ultimate organizational taboo, and share secrets with the public and the news media. 
 
 There have always been American spies who have betrayed their country for money. Now, from Chelsea Manning to Edward Snowden to Reality Winner, a new class of rogue employee has emerged: People who decide there are secrets the public needs to know, and take it upon themselves to share them with reporters. 
 
 Reality Leigh Winner, 25, a federal contractor charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for sending classified material to a news organization, poses in a picture posted to her Instagram account. Reality Winner / Instagram via Reuters 
 
 "It’s a new kind of insider threat that the agency can’t defend against," Aid said. 
 
 And it’s getting worse, he added, in part because "Donald Trump and the change in the political scene in America has created an environment for a lot of people who feel that they have to DO something. You become an instant activist." 
 
 Winner was vocal in her opposition to Trump on social media, but her motives are unclear. According to federal charging documents, she admitted to mailing a Top Secret document detailing Russian hacking intelligence to the news media. She faces one count of "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information." 
 
 The lines are blurry, but Winner and those like her seem in a different class than the Washington insiders who have always leaked to settle internal scores or to make policy points. They are small fries, far from the nation’s power centers, inside a vast intelligence apparatus who decide the public needs to know what they do. Manning leaked from Baghdad; Snowden was based in Hawaii; Winner was in Georgia. 
 
 "These are people who have a greater sense of loyalty to some outside cause than to the organization they are working in, and that’s a new thing for the intelligence community," said a former senior NSA official, who asked not to be named so he could speak more candidly about sensitive topics. 
 
 There is another dimension, another former NSA official said: Too much information is classified, and everyone working in intelligence knows it. 
 
 Related: NSA Leak Mystery Not Solved With Arrest of Hal Martin 
 
 Indeed, the document Winner allegedly leaked did not seem, on its face, to be terribly sensitive. The U.S. government, after all, was perfectly willing to acknowledge its authenticity by charging Winner barely an hour after the story broke on The Intercept, as if to send a message. The charging documents don’t link the case to The Intercept, but officials quickly did so in background comments to reporters. 
 
 Her attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, said Winner has yet to enter a plea, although a detention hearing is scheduled for Thursday. She remains jailed in Lincoln County. 
 
 "A week ago today she was living her life," he said. "Now she’s in the middle of a political whirlwind." ||||| (CNN) Before she was accused of mailing classified information to a media outlet , Reality Winner was a Texas-raised linguist, yoga instructor and animal lover who regularly took to social media to blast President Donald Trump. 
 
 The 25-year-old federal contractor now stands charged with leaking information regarding a 2016 Russian military intelligence cyberattack to The Intercept, an online news outlet. 
 
 The Justice Department announced charges Monday against Reality Leigh Winner, a contractor with Pluribus International Corp. in Augusta, Georgia. She is accused of "removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet," according to a federal complaint. 
 
 She is now being held at a facility in Lincolnton, Georgia, her attorney said. 
 
 Who is Reality Winner? 
 
 -- Winner is a federal contractor with top secret security clearance. She had been assigned to a US government agency facility in Georgia since February 13. 
 
 -- She is accused of leaking classified information, used as the basis for an article published Monday by The Intercept, detailing a classified National Security Agency memo. The NSA report, dated May 5, provides details of a 2016 Russian cyberattack on a US voting software supplier, though there is no evidence the hack affected any votes. 
 
 -- Winner was a linguist in the US Air Force and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, said her mother, Billie Winner-Davis. 
 
 "She served her country; she is a veteran," her stepfather, Gary Davis, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday: "She's a patriot, and to see her maligned and slandered in the media is very disheartening." 
 
 -- Winner served in the Air Force from December 2010 to 2016. Her rank was senior airman, and her last duty title was cryptologic language analyst, according to the Air Force. She provided support to missions and received the Air Force Commendation Medal in 2016, which is for members who have "distinguished themselves by meritorious achievement and service." She "provided over 1,900 hours of enemy intelligence exploitation and assisted in geolocating 120 enemy combatants," the award said. 
 
 -- She was raised in Kingsville, Texas, and served in the Air Force in Columbia, Maryland. Her mother confirmed she was a federal contractor in Augusta but did not know the nature of her work, or whether she had contracted for the NSA. 
 
 -- "Outside of work she works as a yoga instructor. She's just a normal person," her court-appointed attorney, Titus Nichols, said. 
 
 How did she become a suspect? 
 
 Winner is accused of printing the classified intelligence reporting May 9 and mailing it to a news outlet a few days later, according to the federal complaint 
 
 The Intercept contacted the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for its article. 
 
 The news outlet provided the US government agency with a copy of the document, according to the complaint. 
 
 After examining the document, it was determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded or creased, "suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space," according to the criminal complaint. 
 
 An internal audit revealed Winner was one of six people who printed the document but the only one who had email contact with the news outlet, according to the complaint. 
 
 Prosecutors said when confronted with the allegations, Winner admitted to leaking the classified document intentionally -- and she was arrested Saturday in Augusta. 
 
 She had removed the intelligence reporting from her office and mailed it from Augusta, according to the affidavit in support of her arrest. 
 
 Nichols cast doubt on the government's side of the story, and as for the purported confession, he said, "The bigger issue is: Was my client interrogated without her attorney?" 
 
 Winner is set to go before US Magistrate Judge Brian Epps for a detention hearing Thursday in Augusta, Nichols said. The judge will determine whether to release her on bond. Winner did not enter a plea in her initial appearance Monday. 
 
 What does social media reveal? 
 
 Winner posted under a pseudonym, Sara Winners, but didn't seem concerned with concealing her identity, using a photo of herself as a profile picture and posting a selfie in February. 
 
 She posted about leaks and regularly took to social media to complain about Trump , though her Twitter activity dropped off significantly after she began working for Pluribus in February. On Instagram, where she used the name @Reezlie, same as her Twitter handle, she mostly posted selfies from the gym or photos of food. 
 
 On Twitter, she followed Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, several accounts with links to the hacking collective, Anonymous, and several "alt" government agency accounts that became popular after Trump's inauguration. Many of the accounts claim to be run by agency employees unhappy with Trump. 
 
 On Election Night, when it became apparent Trump would win, she tweeted, "Well. People suck. #ElectionNight" 
 
 Earlier this year, she took to Twitter to criticize Trump for golfing on weekends and later called the President an "orange fascist." 
 
 Though she didn't post explicitly about hacking or leaking, she liked and retweeted posts on the topic, including a tweet from Anonymous hinting at hacking Trump's computer and one about White House press secretary Sean Spicer's reportedly lax approach to securing his personal data. 
 
 Her last tweet appears to be from March 5, when she replied to @AnonymousPress asking, "what happened to the Feb 28th call for Trump to resign?" 
 
 Her mother said she wasn't especially political and had never praised past leakers such as Snowden to her. 
 
 "She's never ever given me any kind of indication that she was in favor of that at all," Winner-Davis said. "I don't know how to explain it." 
 
 Winner's attorney, Nichols, told CNN he was unable to confirm that the Twitter account was Winner's. 
 
 Who supports her? 
 
 WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange called on the public to support Winner, adding that the young woman is "accused of courage in trying to help us know." 
 
 It doesn't matter why she did it or the quality the report. Acts of non-elite sources communicating knowledge should be strongly encouraged. — Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) June 6, 2017 
 
 "It doesn't matter why she did it or the quality the report. Acts of non-elite sources communicating knowledge should be strongly encouraged," he tweeted. 
 
 A GoFundMe campaign was set up for her legal battle. 
 
 Nichols has described his client as a veteran, not a traitor, and -- citing a statement from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying leakers of classified information must be held accountable -- accused the government of pursuing Winner for political reasons. 
 
 "You don't see very often the deputy attorney general releasing a press release before a case has been prosecuted," Nichols said. "The government seems to have a political agenda. They're going after a low-level government employee." 
 
 Asked whether the leaked documents were legitimate, he responded, "If the documents are accurate, then the bigger issue is: Did Russia hack our election?" 
 
 Who opposes her? 
 
 Many officials criticized the leak. 
 
 JUST WATCHED Chaffetz details right way to be whistleblower Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Chaffetz details right way to be whistleblower 01:22 
 
 "Just because you see something that is classified, you can't just hand that out like it's candy," said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. 
 
 "There's a right way and wrong way to do this. If you feel compelled to share information that's classified because you're concerned about the implications, there are legal ways in which you can have whistleblower protection and go to committee for instance, on oversight, and protect your legal rights and not get yourself in trouble. 
 
 "A contractor, a federal employee cannot just take it upon themselves to bypass the classification system," Chaffetz said. 
 
 Steve Hall, former CIA chief of Russia operations, said that while leaks are part of the tensions in an open society, they could tip off the Russians to protect themselves better next time. 
 
 "It's a morally difficult situation because, yes, there is public value in these leaks, but by the same token, there's a high public intelligence price to pay and the public is less protected in the future if this stuff gets out," said Hall, a CNN national security analyst. ||||| Reality Leigh Winner, a federal contractor from Augusta, Georgia, has been charged by the Department of Justice for leaking classified information on a 2016 Russian military intelligence cyberattack to The Intercept, an online news outlet. 
 
 Winner, who is 25 years old, was not a public figure prior to the news of her arrest. Here's what we know about her so far. 
 
 A federal contractor who allegedly took a risk 
 
 Winner served as a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, according to officials, and had been working at an unidentified government facility in Georgia "since on or about Feb. 13," according to an affidavit in support of application for her arrest warrant, written by Justin C. Garrick, a special agent with the FBI. 
 
 Pluribus International Corporation lists one employee location in Georgia on its website -- Fort Gordon, a United States Army installation -- but it's unclear if that is indeed where Winner was based. 
 
 ABC News reached out to Pluribus International Corporation for a comment about Winner's arrest but did not immediately receive a response. 
 
 She had top secret security clearance at her job, Garrick wrote in the affidavit. 
 
 On or about May 9, 2017, Winner allegedly printed and improperly removed the classified intelligence report, according to Garrick's affidavit, which noted that the material had been dated on May 5. 
 
 The Intercept reached out to the government on May 30 for comment on the story it was planning to run, and on June 1, the FBI was notified about that interaction. 
 
 According to the affidavit, Winner confessed to Agent Garrick on June 3. 
 
 Winner was formally charged by the Justice Department with removing and mailing classified material to a news outlet on Monday. She has not yet entered a plea. 
 
 Her attorney told ABC News that Winner remains in federal custody, and will have a detention hearing on Thursday to determine if she will be released before her trial. 
 
 "A good person ... caught in a political whirlwind" 
 
 Winner is a former Air Force linguist who speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, according to her attorney, and had recently worked as a yoga instructor at a studio called Oh Yeah Yoga in Augusta. 
 
 Oh Yeah Yoga owner Annalisa Adams described Winner to ABC News as a "reliable" employee. 
 
 "She taught first class at my studio in January," Adams said. "She started doing sub stuff but eventually - she was so reliable - I gave her two classes." 
 
 She added, "[Winner] was never anything but completely professional and we're honestly all in complete shock that she took this step." 
 
 "She’s a good person with no criminal history who is caught in a political whirlwind," her attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, told ABC News in a statement Monday night. 
 
 Winner’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis, called her a "very passionate" person who was outspoken about her beliefs. 
 
 "Very passionate about her views and things like that, but she’s never to my knowledge been active in politics or any of that,” Winner-Davis told The Daily Beast on Monday. 
 
 Gary Davis, Winner’s stepfather, described Winner to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday as a veteran and a patriot. 
 
 “She’s a veteran, six years’ service of the Air Force,” he said. “She received commendations during that time. She’s just a passionate young woman who probably made some mistakes.” 
 
 “You may not agree with her politics but she is a patriot,” Davis told the paper. 
 
 Winner's social media presence shows her to be frequently critical of President Trump, and concerned about environmental issues. 
 
 Roughly four months ago, she wrote a Facebook post that was critical of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. 
 
 "Repeat after me: In the United States of America, in the year 2017, access to clean, fresh, water is not a right, but a privilege based off one's socio-economic status," Winner wrote. "If that didn't feel good to say aloud, contact your senators today and tell them those exact words as to why the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines cannot be built on American soil. Let's fix the pipes meant to bring water, sans lead or pollutants, to our citizens before we build pipes meant to benefit big oil and poison the land. #NoDAPL"
– Reality Winner was charged Monday with leaking a document about the Russian hacking of US electoral systems. One of the most surprising things, according to NBC News, was that a 25-year-old had top-level security clearance. But apparently it's not that unusual. Most people who do NSA work involving intercepting communications and translation are just out of high school. "There are thousands and thousands of 18- to 21-year-olds doing critically important and secret work around the world," an expert on the NSA says. Many of them, like Winner, are young members of the military. She served six years in the Air Force. A high security clearance is needed to listen in on terrorists or members of foreign governments. Intelligence officials are concerned that Winner is part of a growing number of American intelligence employees leaking state secrets not for money but because they feel the public has a right to know the information. The election of President Trump is making people feel like they need to take action. CNN details Winner's anti-Trump comments on social media. And ABC News has more information on the 25-year-old, including that she speaks Pashto, Farsi, and Dari and had recently worked as a yoga instructor, where she was known as a "reliable" employee. Winner's mother says her daughter is "very passionate about her views."