Wikileaks Source Outed To Stroke Hacker's Own Ego

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.

Comments

First rule of breaking the law

[Wonko the Sane]

If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Kind of difficult to follow that advice when the lawbreaking in question consists solely of not keeping your mouth shut.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[DrugCheese]

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.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[DrugCheese]

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:So....

[erroneus]

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.

Why did he need "Limo" in the first place?

[Hurricane78]

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!

Re:I don't care

[Idiomatick]

And individuals have a moral obligation to stop things they feel are wrong. Even if they are grunts. I think in these situations there should be a court which determines whether he was being ethical in his actions. Not simply whether or not he was breaking military rules.

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.