Slashdot Mirror
Losing His Religion: Adrian Lamo Interview
digidave writes "Six months after the sit-down, TechFocus.org has published their interview with renowned hacker Adrian Lamo. Done before his arrest, TechFocus kept the interview secret so as not to influence the outcome of his trial. It remains his only interview since being arrested."
wait, this doesnt make sense "Done before his arrest, TechFocus kept the interview secret so as not to influence the outcome of his trial. It remains his only interview since being arrested." How can it be both before his arrest, ... and then be the only interview after being arrested??
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it seems to me that unless the comanies specifically hired him as a security consultant, then he has no legal support in these matters.
However, he did not damage/alter any of the sites he hacked (excluding NYTimes, which was a minor addition to the list of "experts"). This does not help him in the courts though, because the act of breaking into the company's networks was illegal in itself.
Well, they'll never be able to track you via your slashdot account.
Seriously, there's a rather supernatural school of thought that says we'll never hear interviews from the "best hackers," because they'll never get caught. I don't believe in superhackers -- but you have to wonder, with these guys catching interview with Lamo right before his latch, if an ego is REALLY the best thing for any criminal to possess. I mean, you need respect and renown to make it in a world without structure, but it seems having the blackhats known your name makes it easier for it to fall in the laps of the whitehats.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
I dont mean to flame or anything, but im not to impressed by Lamo. he did some crazy things, but any lucky script kiddie could do the same. besides the fact that he was a meth addict, his "hacker skills" consist of using a web browser to snoop in unprotected directorys. In fact, he does not even know c++ or java.
If you break the law shut up about it. Seriously, people bend and break laws all the time. Good, honest people. They cheat a little on their taxes, they don't stop all the way at stop signs, maybe they visit a prostitute occasionally.
No one really cares until:
1) The problem becomes extreme - instead of going 5 miles/hour over the speed limit you go 25 over.
2) You trumpet your illegalities all over the place.
If a sysadmin at the NY Times had received a discreet phone call from Lamo they would have had the option to ignore the whole situation and just quietly fix the problem. Instead they got a phone call from a reporter who was about to write a news piece on how this guy broke into their network.
I'm not saying that they were right, just that it's understandable and Lamo shot himself in the foot with his lack of discretion. I learned this same lesson in high school when I wrote a creative writing paper that was so bloody offensive that I had to have a conference with my parents, the principle, the teacher and the school psychologist. My teacher told me in private that he wouldn't have done anything but make me re-write the paper but since I showed it to a bunch of people (whose parents called in) he had no choice.