Wikileaks Source Outed To Stroke Hacker's Own Ego 347
Binary Boy writes "Bradley Manning, the US Army private arrested recently by the Pentagon for providing classified documents — including the widely seen Apache helicopter video — may have been duped by wannabe hacker Adrian Lamo, according to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. Lamo told Manning he could provide protection under both journalist shield laws, and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition, and instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion."
The article also goes into Wired's role in the whole situation, the strange, sometimes sensationalist media coverage, and the odd similarity between this case and proposed scenarios in a US Intelligence report from earlier this year aimed at undermining Wikileaks.
First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
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If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
Indeed. This guy "outed" himself by bragging online to other people.
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Precisely. I don't go round bragging about the various politicians and CEOs that have "disappeared" over the years. Ooops
I shouldna told ya that.
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Wow, actually I'm the douchebag here. Durr!
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe when a stranger at the other end of a keyboard tells you that he is a journalist and priest you should check up on his credentials before you admit to him that you committed a felony?
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to clarify - if you find that he really is what he claims, does that mean you should trust him more - or less?
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of difficult to follow that advice when the lawbreaking in question consists solely of not keeping your mouth shut.
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Which is an important caution to keep in mind when committing this particular variety of crime. :-)
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question is, is it a crime, when it exposes other crimes?
sadly, the world is not black and white.
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Crime is what legislators, prosecutors, lawyers, juries, and judges decide it is.* My guess is that Manning will be convicted of something and sent to jail**, regardless of how much of a public service he may have done.
[*: This is a description, not a judgement. There are rare instances in which we are lucky enough to have that process align well with Right and Wrong, but I am by no means claiming such luck is commonplace.]
[**: And if he does not end up in jail, the notion that this is all an anti-wikileak
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It is still a crime when it exposes another crime just the same as a crime doesn't negate another crime.
In other words, if you break and enter a building in order to obtain evidence that someone murdered someone, neither crime disappears unless you are the cops hiding certain facts that your supervisor doesn't want known. there might be some instances where the crime becomes un-prosecutable because of the way evidence was gathered making it unusable, but it doesn't disappear or get negated.
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Don't talk about what you did after the fact.
One of the real stories is how this guy leaked information, but didn't actually understand how to interpret. So he put his own ignorant spin on the thing to make it fit into his world view.'
He probably need to read fewer issues of 2600.
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"Kind of difficult to follow that advice when the lawbreaking in question consists solely of not keeping your mouth shut."
Kind of EASY to follow when you are both computer-literate and trained in security. If idiot boy had been leaking data out of principle instead
of being an attention whore, he'd have stayed anonymous and ensured an ongoing flow of data rather than wanting recognition from the Leet.
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He didn't have to contact Lamo, or anyone else, in a manner that left a trail. He knew how not to leave a trail. The attention would have been easy to obtain without a trail, so the trail was a choice. Maintaining one's position is also a choice. Don't have "other issues". Soldiers are expected to have self-mastery.
I understand the flood of love /. generally has for this guy, but at least learn from his fuckups.
If YOU wanted to blow the whistle on (insert entity) which could impose negative consequences, wo
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't say it was smart, I was telling you that he didn't jeopardize his sources for this - he'd already lost them. And it's unlikely he did this for personal gain as he tried to arrange to remain unnamed.
He had stated a goal of making sure more people saw the documents and debated them. It's pretty likely he was just trying to stir up more attention for the abuses he was blowing the whistle on.
Apparently he found Lamo via a twitter search but Lamo was semi-famous, anti-establishment, and had spoken of donating to wikileaks and his interest in the organization. On the surface he would seem like a good person to contact.
And yes, his mistakes are very clear. I'm pretty sure that between that and how the article showed that "real" journalists are in the pocket of the government anyways that nobody here would bother asking for confidentiality and simply arrange to remain anonymous.
But Bradley Manning's success is also clear. He turned his superiors in for crimes against humanity despite great personal cost to himself. If there were more of him there wouldn't have been Nazis.
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Pretty much my sentiments. He pretty much set himself up for this.
And I can't blame Adrian for a second. 250k documents indiscriminately fired off IS a security risk that can get people killed. I could understand the video, but Manning was as much wanting notoriety as the article claims Adrian supposedly was. Why else carelessly brag about such a major operation?
Manning was a loose cannon and a liability even for Adrian. Had Manning been caught WITHOUT Adrian's help and those chat logs would have been found
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Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the story, Greenwald writes about several accounts of newspapers sitting on stories to help President Bush. The NY Times sitting on the illegal wiretapping of the US for a year until after the election at the request of Bush was one. Then there's the stuff the Washington Post held onto: the CIA black sites. And the mention of creepy David Finkel for the Post holding onto the same "Collateral Murder" video.
Plus we now have Obama cracking down on leaks with prison terms. Not going after the illegal stuff that caused the leak, but the leakers themselves.
Basically, wikileaks is the best option. I wish Manning had been quiet but he's 22 and wasn't thinking the whole thing through.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
But he's not breaking the law. He swore an oath to protect the constitution from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.
blah blah blah nazi blah blah blah blindly following orders
The fact that his employer is the enemy of the constitution should bear no moral weight.
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Regardless of if his actions are justified or not he was stupid to open his mouth to a "journalists" or anyone else.
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Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, thank you for spelling out my point for laymen.
The informants, Manning, information up to this point has been correct. So why assume the rest isn't? If said 'classified' information is truly unconstitutional, you know it, and you go along with the flow then I say yes you are responsible. To what degree? Probably very little, group think is a powerful phenomenon.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. This man did something.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:4, Interesting)
He was ordered to use known irrelevant data to frame innocent Iraqis as dissidents. Presumably from stories of Abu Ghraib, to have them rounded up into camps and prisons where many were tortured and died.
We hung Nazis for that sort of thing, yeah... He did what we'd want a "good" Nazi to do. Hopefully we expect as much of good Americans.
This leak is apparently just the tip of the war crimes he's witnessed. With documentation from him they might be able to finally prove the situation in detainee camps (we won't even treat them like POWs) is knowingly inhumane and inflicted on innocents.
That's the point (Score:5, Interesting)
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What I find even more odd, is that this Private is supposed to have spilled his guts to Lamo over unencrypted AIM... AFTER contacting Lamo via PGP-encrypted e-mails?!
Re:That's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Greenwald's suspicion is probably true (Score:5, Interesting)
The author thinks it may be a setup by the Pentagon to discredit Wikileaks.
I think that the govt has establish a relationship with Lamo in the past. Similarly, just after the Apache helicopter video became news, the govt came down hard on Manning, scared the wits out of him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Now all of a sudden we are hearing about vast amounts of state secrets that nasty ol' Wikileaks took from Manning's tender but misguided hands.
(sniff) 'How could those rats do this to my Homeland?!!!' (sob...)
Only thing is Assange says he has never seen or heard about this supposed cache of stolen communications, and I tend to think that the govt is telling Manning to make this (damaging to Wikileaks) claim as part of a deal.
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The First Part is the Manning has a self-destructive personality. He might have to constantly set himself up for failure.
So the whole thing could be explained that way.
---
Second.
This whole thing smacks me of the South Park, 'having your cake and eating it too'
Obama is a 'very smart guy'.
He is conscious of the fact that things like Wiki leaks, are and openness are to be Lauded.
I think he also realizes that if he mentions this sort of thing in public that he will not make into his 2nd term.
He would be brand
So.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Suppose something happened to Lamo in revenge, out there in the offline world - maybe such operations would be discouraged in future.
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Suppose something happened to Lamo in revenge, out there in the offline world - maybe such operations would be discouraged in future.
That is a game any number can play. But the pros are likely to win.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That, of course, ignores the fact that others are playing games that put our freedom and safety at risk at every turn.
There are people who seek to justify war and killing at every opportunity. Some seek to enrich themselves through the military industrial complex. Others by taking the resources of foreign lands. Meanwhile these actions make every citizen and resident of the U.S. less safe because the rest of the planet is gradually loosing appreciation for the U.S. and are taking it out on the people of the U.S.
The winning move is definitely not "not to play." In fact, it is the most assured way to lose... we are all losing while the players are winning.
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That's odd you feel that way, considering the amateurs outnumber the pros 1000 to 1.
The amateur lacks organization, discipline, training and resources. It's the pro who goes into the field with a thousand men at his back.
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What I don't get, is how Adrian Lamo found out Manning was the guy who did it?
I mean, how do you dupe someone into giving you that kind of information if you don't know they have it?
So, it sounds like Manning was "boasting" about it - which one of the articles even uses that words, which is entirely his own stupidity and not some "operation" preformed by anyone, at all.
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lol no (Score:3, Interesting)
Governments are *very* good at force escalation. Gandhi and MLK won by denying them legitimacy once they employed force. By comparison, the Palestinians have never gained their own state precisely because they've refused to forswear violence.
You need not be completely non-violent of course, but you must convincingly reject violence. Indeed, Gandhi and MLK both faced competition from violent groups with the same goals, but they and their lieutenants rejected violence so absolutely that government could no
Manning must not have been able to operate Google (Score:3, Insightful)
He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
All I care about is why that footage hasn't really been all that well explained by the military.
I want to see and hear both sides on this obviously, but pointing out the motivation as hubris at this point is sort of the smaller part of a bigger picture.
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what's bugging me here as well. Who cares how the footage was released? The important thing is WHY we have soldiers killing unarmed civilians.
The military guys seem to have a very elitist attitude about the whole thing, like us little people don't need to know how this could have happened. As though it's none of our business somehow.
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
They say there are important bits of the video missing, great! I'm willing to believe that, show it to me!
But so far? Nada.
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Otherwise it simply discourages leaks and whistle blowers. Which may be good from a military POV. But we should be working towards what is good from a countries POV.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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When the commander in chief tell you to jump, you ask "how high". In other words, when serving the military, you don't decide whether or not to engage in warfare. If you can't handle active duty, don't join the military. It's a service, not welfare.
No.
The moment "I was following orders" stopped being a valid excuse for actions taken it immediately became the responsibility of each and every soldier to evaluate the moral and legal ramifications of every order he or she is given. It instant you make military individually liable for what they do you entitle and mandate them to weigh, judge, and potentially disobey your orders. You can't have it both ways.
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Its like the prison pictures or the rendition flights, its not the act they care about, its the exposure back home.
The myth is exposed.
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Yes... just remember it's secret for national security reasons... the familiar cry of the oppressor.
At least in the US, we are not at the stage yet where the military can openly admit that they are beginning an ongoing operation whose objective is to slaughter civillians en masse, and not expect to get an overwhelmingly negative response frmo the public....
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That's because they can just label them "terrorists" instead of "civilians".
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
I do. I care a lot. Why does someone have to face a lifetime in prison just to allow us to discuss 'WHY we have soldiers killing unarmed civilians'?
The fact that it took someone breaking the law to show a commonplace incident in the so-called War on Terror can be viewed as a sad commentary on the state of censorship in our time, or (if you're an optimist) an affirmation that, despite a culture of secrecy, information really does want to be free.
In either case, Greenwald's conjecture is that Manning really was genuinely motivated by his conscience and that his 'confessor' Lamo rewarded his honesty with lies, venality and betrayal. I find his case as presented compelling but not conclusive.
Greenwald's larger point about wikileaks, however, is irrefutable:
As others will no doubt suggest, whistle blowers should understand the consequences of their actions, accepting the sometimes inevitable retribution that follows in order to serve the public good. That does not, however, excuse what Greenwald characterises as 'despicable' behaviour by Lamo. If this account proves true, then Lamo really is a sick, sorry individual.
I find this whole story compelling precisely because it demonstrates the stakes involved in something as simple as telling the truth. Secrecy and Transparency are equally costly and dangerous as we wander too far towards either end of the continuum. Stories like Manning's allow us the opportunity to gauge where we are in that continuum.
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What would you have done?
Wait? That leads to the possibility of the convoy being attacked. You don't win wars that way. Hell good luck staying alive that way.
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The airmen did kill unarmed civilians but you have to realize that these civilians were journalists hanging out with armed men. The journalists were carrying cameras but there were men holding RPGs and AK-47s in that crowd they were hanging out with.
I don't think that's the case. It is my understanding that those civilians weren't killed because they were hanging out with armed men, they were killed because their camera were mistaken for weapons.
From http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6344FW20100406 [reuters.com]:
The gunsight tracks two of the men, identified by WikiLeaks as the Reuters news staff, as the fliers identify their cameras as weapons. Military spokesman Turner said that during the engagement, the helicopter mistook a camera for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
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All I care about is why that footage hasn't really been all that well explained by the military
On places where it was heavily discussed, such as Reddit, there were quite a few posts from people who've been in similar situations that explained it pretty well. The following is from memory, so I might have some things mixed up. This was near where an intense ground fight had just happened. The cameraman on the ground didn't have a gun, but on the small screen in the helicopter, when viewed by someone who is used to seeing guns and doesn't expect to see a camera, it looks very similar to a RPG, which can
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it looks very similar to a RPG, which can take down a helicopter
"A rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), or rocket launcher, is any hand-held, shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon capable of firing an unguided rocket equipped with an explosive warhead."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade [wikipedia.org]
Chances of taking down that gunship with an unguided projectile considering the range are um....zero. That doesn't mean that the engagement was necessarily unreasonable but a lot of people seem to be rehashing this silly implication that the presence of an RPG means the gunshi
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the freakin' Middle East, everybody has guns. I see this comment and other versions of it posted around here and other forums by guys with a pretty recent UID. Could there be some spreading of misinformation going on from the powers-that-be that don't want this video out?
This whole thing stinks badly. There have been mistakes before and the footage has usually been released, people accepted it, people apologized, people got punished and moved on. There seems to be a media blackout around this event and a lot of nationalistic propaganda being spread around the subject.
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So, the best you can do is brag about your lower UID as if that makes you superior, accuse me of astroturfing, suggest that that the whole thing stinks badly and that there "seems" to be a media blackout, and not even attempt to counter any of my actual points?
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Informative)
It is the freakin' Middle East, everybody has guns
I *SERIOUSLY* doubt that.
According to Spiegel [spiegel.de] the gun ownership rate in Iraq is 39 guns for every 100 people. When you factor in kids as presumably unarmed, I think saying that "Everybody has guns" is probably close to the truth.
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Re:I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
BTW you are blaming people that were albeit foolishly trying to rescue a dieing man for getting shot by a helicopter that came there from a different country to help them. Foolish maybe but talk about blaming the victim.
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Thank you. I hate the Iraq war, but I, too, didn't see anything wrong in that video.
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To a point, I agree. I'm willing to state that the first "fire fight" is warranted. I can see where someone onlooking would interpret the video as a group of armed men on the ground preparing an ambush. When someone's got to make a call on that point, I'd rather they err on the side of caution and protect our men on the ground.
I'm not willing to call the second "fire fight" warranted, however. The video clearly shows the wounded reporter without a weapon, and the van's occupants attempting to "rescue" him.
Good Grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya well (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems as though this guy didn't leak the data for the public good, but rather because he was angry. He was getting back at people etc, etc. Well that sort of thinking doesn't lead to good decision making.
There's a real difference in personality type and action between people with different motivations for breaking a trust and revealing confidential data.
In the case of conscience, it is because you really believe this is important to the public good. You believe that the world needs this information to be
Citation? (Score:5, Informative)
TFA has excerpts from the chat in which Manning had told Lamo that he wanted this material out in the public domain to spur debate, that he was having some moral issues with how the military was doing business. What's your source that he was doing this for revenge?
His actions (Score:3, Insightful)
I will admit, I do not know what his motivations are, but then we'll never know. He could say one thing and simply be lying. However the way he has acted leads me to believe ego was the driving force. As I said, the biggest would be running his mouth like he did. He wanted credit for what he'd done, but of course that would get him in trouble. So he was bragging to those he believed he was safe in telling.
Then there's the events preceding the leak. By his own statements his girlfriend had broken up with him
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You conspiracy nuts are funny. "Anyone who says something I disagree with must be working for the government!" No, sorry, not the case. I just happen to be perfectly capable of looking at things and coming to my own conclusions. I work at a university, doing tech support, not for any government agency.
If you seriously thing the government gives a shit about what people on Slashdot think, the to the point of "infiltrating" it, you are WAY too paranoid.
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However this was not a case like that, it was a case of ego.
However, the one person who has suggested that it was a case of ego and not patriotism is Lamo himself and if these allegations about Lamo are correct, then that really casts doubt on the whole idea.
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However, the one person who has suggested that it was a case of ego and not patriotism is Lamo himself and if these allegations about Lamo are correct, then that really casts doubt on the whole idea.
As in, maybe he's assuming that everyone else is just like him?
Shocking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Persona non grata (Score:3)
Whatever the reason, nobody is ever going to trust Lamo with a secret again.
Lamo does not care (Score:2)
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Thankfully, no one will ever trust Bradley Manning with a secret again, either.
Re:Persona non grata (Score:4, Insightful)
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Damn straight! We should be able to keep anything secret that makes us look bad. We are, after all, totally awesome and in the right about everything. And it's all just lies and spin anyway. Why do you hate america? What's wrong with you?
(just trying to see things from the others' perspective.)
More information at infoworld.com (Score:2, Informative)
href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/wikileaks-part-ii-adrian-lamo-responds-580-0?page=0,1 [infoworld.com]
and
href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/spies-wikileaks-and-hackers-oh-my-443 [infoworld.com]
Highlight of the reply from Lamo:
You have a number of questions that could be answered by contacting me. I politely request that you consider doing so via my publicly-available contact details in the future - and if you did & I was somehow unreachable, I retract this & apologize.
I would suggest that Manning is
"Salon" impresses me (Score:5, Informative)
I for one congratulate Salon for this very well balanced article.
Re:"Salon" impresses me (Score:4, Informative)
Did you read the same article I read? It is not unbiased (most of Glenn Greenwald's work is slightly biased, quite often with a pinch of venomous rhetoric, usually towards those who deserve it)
Greenwald believes Manning is probably a heroic whistle blower, not a criminal.
The reason this story matters so much -- aside from the fact that it may be the case that a truly heroic, 22-year-old whistle-blower is facing an extremely lengthy prison term
He also believes Lamo was doing it for the attention.
Making Lamo's conduct even worse is that it appears he reported Manning for no reason other than a desire for some trivial media attention. Jacob Appelbaum, a well-known hacker of the Tor Project who has known Lamo for years, said that Lamo's "only concern" has always been "getting publicity for Adrian." Indeed, Lamo's modus operandi as a hacker was primitive hacking aimed at high-profile companies that he'd then use Poulsen to publicize. As Appelbaum put it: "if this situation really fell into Adrian's lap, his first and only thought would have been: how can I turn this to my advantage? He basically destroyed a 22-year-old's life in order to get his name mentioned on the Wired.com blog."
Re:"Salon" impresses me (Score:5, Interesting)
Manning described the incident which first made him seriously question the U.S. war in Iraq: when he was instructed to work on the case of Iraqi "insurgents" who had been detained for distributing "insurgent" literature which, when he had it translated, turned out to be nothing more than "a scholarly critique against PM Maliki":
Maliki: i had an interpreter read it for me... and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled "Where did the money go?" and following the corruption trail within the PM's cabinet... i immediately took that information and *ran* to the officer to explain what was going on... he didn't want to hear any of it... he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding *MORE* detainees... i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth... but that was a point where i was a *part* of something... i was actively involved in something that i was completely against...
And he was leaking it to WikiLeaks because he believed that was where it would do the most public good:
Manning: i mean what if i were someone more malicious- i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?
In regards to his belief that Lamo was doing it for the attention:
On May 20 -- a month ago -- Poulsen, out of nowhere, despite Lamo's not having been in the news for years, wrote a long, detailed Wired article describing serious mental health problems Lamo was experiencing... Lamo called the police, who concluded that he was experiencing such acute psychiatric distress that they had him involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for three days. That 72-hour "involuntary psychiatric hold" was then extended by a court for six more days, after which he was released to his parents' home. Lamo claimed he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a somewhat fashionable autism diagnosis which many stars in the computer world have also claimed. In that article, Poulsen also summarized Lamo's extensive hacking history. Lamo told me that, while he was in the mental hospital, he called Poulsen to tell him what happened, and then told Poulsen he could write about it for a Wired article. So starved was Lamo for some media attention that he was willing to encourage Poulsen to write about his claimed psychiatric problems if it meant an article in Wired that mentioned his name.
It was just over two weeks after writing about Lamo's Asperger's, depression and hacking history that Poulsen, along with Kim Zetter, reported that PFC Manning had been detained, after, they said, he had "contacted former hacker Adrian Lamo late last month over instant messenger and e-mail." Lamo told me that Manning first emailed him on May 20 and, according to highly edited chat logs released by Wired, had his first online chat with Manning on May 21; in other words, Manning first contacted Lamo the very day that Poulsen's Wired article on Lamo's involuntary commitment appeared (the Wired article is time-stamped 5:46 p.m. on May 20).
Many of the bizarre aspects of this case, at least as conveyed by Lamo and Wired, are self-evident. Why would a 22-year-old Private in Iraq have unfettered access to 250,000 pages of diplomatic cables so sensitive that they "could do serious damage to national security?" Why would he contact a total stranger, whom he randomly found from a Twitter search, in order to "quickly" confess to acts that he knew could send him to prison for a very long time, perhaps his whole
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Where's Q when you need him? (Score:2)
If you want to play James Bond, you have to expect to run into Blofeld every now and then.
Lamo Outed a Felon (Score:2)
Big wow.
Lamo caught a felon. Who cares if his motives reveal him to be just a lowlife?
Adrian Lamo was a known quantity (Score:2)
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Wikileaks has been *such* an important resource for free speech and open society movements everywhere. I sincerely hope that it does go down in flames from all this crap.
Wait, what? Wikileaks is important for free speech and open societies, so you hope it goes down in flames? That doesn't really compute, unless you hate free speech and open societies and consider them the enemy.
Binary Boy appears to be an idiot (Score:2)
wannabe hacker Adrian Lamo
Even a cursory glance at Lamo's history will show he's not a "wannabe" hacker. He was and is a quite accomplished and successful (except for getting caught) hacker.
Why did he need "Limo" in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, really: Protip:
1. Go to some Internet café and upload everything to a "free homepage", "online hard drive" or similar service.
2. Go to another Internet café and post the link to a couple of forums that Wikileaks people frequent, saying that you just found it on that homepage trough a random google search.
3. Watch how after you leave the computer at the Internet cafés, they get wiped and overwritten with a disk image.
4. Watch dozens of customers use the same PC in the next hours/days, making it impossible to know by the fingerprints or by asking the people there, who actually did the upload or posts.
5. WIN!
It was the right thing to do... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It was the right thing to do... (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, claiming it's the "right thing to do" is all the easier when you're guaranteed a front page story in a premier tech magazine. Manning claimed he was doing the right thing too, by exposing hypocrisy and unnecessary violence in a volatile situation, but he didn't give his information to wired, he gave it to a third party to release as they saw fit, not promote himself.
So basically, it's ok to be an informant if it soothes your ego to "keep spies from getting killed" (or gets you into a Wired article), but it's not ok if you attempt to keep civilians from getting killed (or it gets you into a Wikileaks article). Now I understand.
Thank you for your service (Score:4, Interesting)
If this guy goes to prison, I will be the 1st one in line to thank him for his service to the country. As a Vet and citizen I want people who sacrifice for their country in ANY fashion to know they are appreciated.
You don't say? (Score:3)
Lamo told Manning he could provide protection under both journalist shield laws, and the clergy-lay confidentiality tradition, and instead immediately turned him in to authorities in an act of apparent shameless self-promotion.
What the hell did you expect him to say? "Hey, I'm planning to turn you over to the authorities as soon as you email me that video. And can you please hurry? The Justice Department said they want somebody arrested within 12 hours, and that a bonus is involved." I mean seriously--what the fuck? Regardless of his motives, the private in question allegedly willingly showed classified materials to someone who was not authorized to see them. Period. Do you expect the military to have a "we'll take it on a case by case basis" when it comes to the UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE OF CLASSIFIED MATERIALS?
Who submitted this article? I'd click "back" to check but I'm too fucking lazy.
Re: (Score:2)
"... has done some legitimate hacking and cracking..."
I'm not sure you made this joke intentionally, but there it is.
Re: (Score:2)
While we all tend to make a big deal about the difference between hacking and cracking, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are mutually exclusive activities.
Despite what we all like to think it is possible to be both a clever tinkerer and a morally absent jerk.
Re: (Score:2)
Now with tags! (Score:2, Informative)
kpoulsen: @ggreenwald I'm supposed to take journalistic ethics lessons from Gawker? Pass
ggreenwald: @kpoulsen No - you should explain whether the claims Adrian made about his chat that don't appear in your published logs are in them
ggreenwald: @kpoulsen And you should release the parts you're concealing that don't reveal harmful national security secrets or very personal issues
Re:Oh dear (Score:4, Insightful)
The Americans are so self centred and introverted, they will commit patricide for purely save face.
Unlike the pure, upstanding people from every other country on earth, who would never dream of doing such things? It's not just Americans who suck, it's people in general.
Re: (Score:2)
Unlike the pure, upstanding people from every other country on earth, who would never dream of doing such things? It's not just Americans who suck, it's people in general.
But we Americans lay claim to being pure, upstanding people.
My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
Re: (Score:2)
nearly anyone, if not anyone, can be ordained [themonastery.org] at Universal Life for free and with no special requirements. I don't know if this would actually hold up, but yeah, it'd probably be enough to convince an aspie.