Lamo was an asshole who ruined many lives and accomplished little else.
Adrian Lamo has died
161–170 of 248 posts
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#162Sorry, this story isn't very interesting, but it really stuck with me nonetheless, and I wanted to share. Adrian had a passing romance with a friend of mine, and thus ended up traveling through the city I grew up in. This was long before Chelsea Manning, etc. I was a super shy, rather awkward teenage girl. I suppose the teenage part has changed.. but I digress. I loved the idea of mischief, but at the same time, I wa…
Good hackers can expose the inconvenient difference between what is illegal from what is wrong without doing harm to anyone or anything. So thanks for sharing such a beautiful story, it perfectly explains the hacker mindset where mainstream media articles would fail miserably.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#163This guy was seriously mentally troubled, and that's too bad. Chelsea Manning (Bradley/Bradass at the time) confieded in Adrian, Adrian snitched, and the rest is history. He did what he thought was right, but the consequences were absolutely disastrous. Kids, don't be a snitch.
There’s much more to Lamos story than just Manning. He repeatedly went out of his way to stab his “friends” in the back.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, I'm really surprised at some of the comments here. Some hackers have always been suits though, so I shouldn't be surprised.
Definitely shouldn't be surprised, and it's not just the suits. It seems that the election of Trump, in particular, has turned half of the infosec community into rabid fans of the CIA/FBI/NSA. It's really quite sickening. One of my personal favorite public conversions has been the grugq. In 3-4 years he's gone from selling bugs (worldwide), and supporting hackers (worldwide), to a rabid Russiaphobe who uncritically a…
Also of interest, next year much of the USA House of Reps will be CIA agents. Either you're a fan of the intelligence apparatus, or it's coming for your House seat:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/07/dems-m07.html
This seems good for democracy!
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#165Reminder: Lamo is a public figure but also a real person with real relationships with people who will read this thread. You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son.
Reminder: The two Reuters journalists murdered in the video Manning leaked were public figures, but also real people with real relationships. Lamo betrayed the person who brought this to light. The government, think tanks and talking heads all took to television after the video came out, spinning the situation as to why the journalists had sullied themselves and deserved death.
Please! For this rat and traitor we should, as dang says, "bring your heart with you a bit more than you usually would". This Judas is the person we should bring our heart for more than normal?
Honestly I knew before 2010 that Lamo was someone to avoid, just by how he behaved, and told people as such, but perhaps not strongly enough.
The only good thing I can say about this rat is that the last thing he did is probably the only good thing he did. Good riddance. I'll save "heart" for the dead Reuters journalists that the machine that Lamo was part of had killed.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#166Reminder: Lamo is a public figure but also a real person with real relationships with people who will read this thread. You are all commenting on a Facebook thread written by Lamo's dad about the death of his son.
Reminder: The two Reuters journalists murdered in the video Manning leaked were public figures, but also real people with real relationships. Lamo betrayed the person who brought this to light. The government, think tanks and talking heads all took to television after the video came out, spinning the situation as to why the journalists had sullied themselves and deserved death. Please! For this rat and traitor we sho…
[deleted]
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I used to agree with this but honestly, the second Manning contacted him, he was complicit with the crime being committed Are you sure this is true? You don't have a duty to report anything just because you become knowledgeable of it. Mere knowledge doesn't make you complicit.
I don't know specifically in Manning's case, but yes, in general in the US, knowledge that a crime is about to be, is being, or has been committed can make you an accomplice and expose you to criminal liability. In not all cases will knowledge alone necessarily be enough to convict you, but that doesn't mean a prosecutor might not try. An ex-con should probably not take the chance that a prosecutor will ignore prior…
Lamo talked to Manning under the guise of being a journalist. Here's what Glenn Greenwald wrote in 2011, after WIRED published the full logs between Lamo and Manning (it must be pointed out that Greenwald was one of the loudest critics of WIRED and its editors, but I use this link since it quotes from the logs):
https://www.salon.com/2011/07/14/wired_7/
> MANNING: uhm, trying to keep a low profile for now though, just a warning
> LAMO: I'm a journalist and a minister. You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) & enjoy a modicum of legal protection.
Lamo didn't stumble upon evidence of a crime. He got it by claiming to be a journalist. And as a journalist, he would've had plenty of leeway in not revealing a source, even a source that admits to a crime.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's awfully convenient. I supposed we should just trust anyone whenever they claim that their abuses being uncovered hurts American interests. Particularly when their claims are completely unverifiable. I wonder if people will eventually stop falling for such a completely transparent attempt to muddy the waters.
Are you suggesting that it is OK to put numerous third parties in danger (the people whose names being exposed would make them Taliban targets were generally Afghan civilians, not Americans) if the circumstances are such that no one will ever be able to prove that any specific one of them actually comes to harm from that danger? Even when releasing those names does nothing whatsoever to help expose any abuses?
No. I'm not saying that at all.
You seem to have forgotten that you wrote this.
> The best we can do is, as with lung cancer, is think about it statistically. Compare the people exposed in the leaks to similarly situated people who were not mentioned, and see if the former had a statistically significant higher death rate from Taliban attacks for themselves or their families.
> I don't know if the data is available to carry out that analysis.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#169I hope that he found peace, somehow.
Re: Adrian Lamo has died
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
[citation needed]
Nothing seems to have been revealed so far. - https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/secret-government-repo... > Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Iraq-related military documents and State Department cables provided by the Army private Chelsea Manning, the report assessed “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”…
It's not really fair to claim that Lamo was wrong to turn Manning in based on retrospection like this.
It would have been entirely reasonable at the time to assume that some of the 260k+ cables might have endangered US soldiers, allies, and others. The fact that we can't prove it did now does not change the reasonableness of that conclusion nearly a decade ago, and given the stakes at play it seems unfair to vilify someone for doing what he did.