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

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

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

Indeed. This guy "outed" himself by bragging online to other people.

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

[commodore64_love]

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.

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

[couchslug]

"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.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[Shakrai]

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

[Xacid]

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 Adrian would have been just as liable as Manning - probably both locked up, labeled as terrorists, and never see the light of a courtroom. By Lamo reporting Manning he accomplished two main things 1) removed liability from himself, but also 2) brought even more light to the documents released. Who would have even looked for the leaked cables without stumbling upon them first? In essence he not only helped himself, but with the media attention also helped Manning's cause. If Manning's documents actually prove anything then none of this will have been in vain. If they unearth nothing then Manning leaked a bunch of garbage for nothing and is not only reckless but very, very stupid.

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:First rule of breaking the law

[MrShaggy]

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 branded a traitor by the right claiming that was willing to give up national security, as well as 'Amercian Troops' right on 'American Soil' as it were.

Whether Mr Obama is doing this on his own is having help, who knows.

But the Ploy is Brilliant.
I think Obama is trying to 'discredit it'. Officially while helping it at the same time.

Thus allowing him to have his cake and eat it too.

By going after the 'founders' he keeps the site at the top of every ones radar.

By putting someone in jail. If he is a plant, then he might not actually be in jail. He is keeping the central/right side happy.

The fact that Iceland has moved forward with Shield laws for W.Leaks, keeps the left happy since the founders can move there away from any attempts of 'arrest' from the U.S

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[hitmark]

question is, is it a crime, when it exposes other crimes?

sadly, the world is not black and white.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[iowannaski]

Who would have even looked for the leaked cables without stumbling upon them first?

Is bringing attention to the cables a good thing or "a security risk that can get people killed?" You are simultaneously praising Lamo for informing on a whistle blower and bringing attention to leaked documents in question. As for the question of who would have looked for the leaked cables, I have a solid confidence the the U.S. government's ability to comprehensively monitor Wikileaks for potentially embarrassing material.

In essence he not only helped himself, but with the media attention also helped Manning's cause.

The positive impact of the media exposure given to Manning's cause by Lamo is easily outweighed by the evidence he turned over to the government.

If Manning's documents actually prove anything then none of this will have been in vain. If they unearth nothing then Manning leaked a bunch of garbage for nothing and is not only reckless but very, very stupid.

If Manning's documents prove anything, the many years he is about to spend in prison will have been in vain.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[chimpo13]

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

[Hognoxious]

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

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

[peacefinder]

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-wikileaks disinformation operation will look a lot more likely to be correct.]

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[sumdumass]

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.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[abirdman]

The government doesn't have to "comprehensively monitor" Wikileaks... Wikileaks publishes the stuff openly. That's why the government is so irritated by it.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[WNight]

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.

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[couchslug]

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, would you make such silly mistakes?

"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 life? And why would he choose to confess over the Internet, in an unsecured, international AOL IM chat, given the obvious ease with which that could be preserved, intercepted or otherwise surveilled? These are the actions of someone either unbelievably reckless or actually eager to be caught."

Re:First rule of breaking the law

[WNight]

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.

So....

[CdBee]

So we can suppose this is an operation to make people doubt the safety of going to Wikileaks?

Suppose something happened to Lamo in revenge, out there in the offline world - maybe such operations would be discouraged in future.

Re:So....

[westlake]

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....

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

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.

Re:So....

[tsm_sf]

If we have to have a standing army at least let the soldiers have a conscience and be guided by it. Blind obedience is for nationalists.

Manning must not have been able to operate Google

[Trepidity]

He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?

I don't care

[decipher_saint]

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

[MrEricSir]

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

[decipher_saint]

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

[DigiShaman]

The military guys seem to have a very elitist attitude about the whole thing

No, they are genuinely scared about it. Not from the enemy, but buy their own citizens.

It's one thing to be hated by a country you're fighting in. It's quite another to be hated/disowned by the country your FROM. Review the Vietnam protests for example.

Re:I don't care

[mysidia]

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....

Re:I don't care

[guruevi]

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.

Re:I don't care

[Apatharch]

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....

That's because they can just label them "terrorists" instead of "civilians".

Re:I don't care

[grcumb]

That's what's bugging me here as well. Who cares how the footage was released?

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:

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 -- is the unique and incomparably valuable function WikiLeaks is fulfilling. Even before the Apache helicopter leak, I wrote at length about why they are so vital, and won't repeat all of that here. Suffice to say, there are very few entities, if there are any, which pose as much of a threat to the ability of governmental and corporate elites to shroud their corrupt conduct behind an extreme wall of secrecy.

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.

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.

Re:I don't care

[Idiomatick]

Maybe they shouldn't be in shitty wars no one wants. TBH militaries of the world NOT wanting to go to wars everyone disagrees with is a fucking good thing.

Re:I don't care

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It is the freakin' Middle East, everybody has guns

I *SERIOUSLY* doubt that.

According to Spiegel 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.

Re:I don't care

[Idiomatick]

IT ISNT A FUCKING WAR ZONE and you show why. This should be a police operation. With people on the ground building things up and keeping CRIME low. I'm not even questioning the motivations of being in Iraq atm. But you CANNOT wage war on NO ONE. There is no enemy military, no bases, no lines of battle, nothing. Treat it like a country with a lot of well armed murders. Would you declare war on murderers and have heli's shooting people that may have guns w/ out provocation? Of course not, that would be retarded nd only make the problem worse!

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.

Re:I don't care

[Skillet5151]

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

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 gunship crew were under threat and felt the need to defend themselves.

Sorry, carry on.

Re:I don't care

[PsychoSlashDot]

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.

Re:I don't care

[WilliamBaughman]

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:

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.

Re:I don't care

[sumdumass]

I was with you until you started chastising the men for not taking the time to identify their target.

The problem is that there wasn't time if what they thought turned out to be true. They were circling the target, asked on the radio about any friendlies/units in the area, they were talking all the steps possible until they saw the camera which has a silhouette partially resembling a weapon capable of taking them down, the person holding it crouched by a corner to be shielded while the camera/weapon was being aimed in their direction, and at this point, time is simply not there if you expect real soldiers in real combat situation to ever come home alive.

In other words, if you can't take the specifics of the situation into account from the perspective of the heli crew, then you really shouldn't be discussing this at all. You are no different then the blathering idiot boss who's entire sales improvement plan consists of "sell more stuff" leaving your job on the line if you don't. I've been in situations where I was shot at (I wasn't the target), I know what facing the reality of death is. If I'm ever in a situation where I'm trying to determine of the guy holding the gun is friendly or not, as soon as it looks like it's pointed at me is when I decide I need to do something. If you want to sit there waiting for him to shoot or to get a better look at the guy, you will be more likely then not getting shot at. It's no different here. If the camera had been a RPG, if the guys had been insurgents, waiting any more time to identify them could have meant their lives. You can't fault someone for acting on that, even when it turns out to be a big ass horrible and tragic mistake. Fault the politicians who put them in that position but do no sit there and complain that when a person weighs their life against another and picks their, then they should have done something more.

Good Grief.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Honestly, if you're going to leak government docs to Wikileaks, you should't go around tooting your horn about it to random "hackers" you find on-line. This guy may have been caught in the end anyway, but he didn't do himself any favors by not KEEPING HIS MOUTH SHUT about it.

Shocking...

[sanctimonius hypocrt]

that he would betray the confidence of someone who trusted him.

Persona non grata

[RayMarron]

Whatever the reason, nobody is ever going to trust Lamo with a secret again.

Re:Persona non grata

[Idiomatick]

Shooting Reuters reporters and a van of civilians is a secret that should be kept now?

Re:Persona non grata

[microbox]

Shooting Reuters reporters and a van of civilians is a secret that should be kept now?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/wikileaks-part-ii-adrian-lamo-responds-580-0?page=0,1

and

href=http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/spies-wikileaks-and-hackers-oh-my-443

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 neither a whistleblower nor a spy (although he may be guilty of espionage, which is a different animal in some circles.) I was aware that KLP had little interest in keeping my identity secret.

Whether I was right is not for me to globally judge (though I believe I did the right thing, which is also a different animal. Yes, I'm splitting that hair mighty thin.)

Poulsen knows I've been around the block a couple dozen times, and I've been a bona-fide confidential source, albeit never for Poulsen. I don't feel taken advantage of. If I was pressured, it was up to me to exercise my right & ability to resist.

I object to your characterization of Asperger's as a "disability" - it's more-often described as a "syndrome" or "condition" in psychiatric circles, and in a less pejorative fashion to boot.

I know Poulsen isn't my friend. We don't socialize. We don't go clubbing. He's the most highly ethical journalist I know. If I were unaware that he considers me a source, not a friend, I'd be taken advantage of. I am however quite aware of this.

The government - and this is important - never asked me to be a source for them in the Manning case, in terms of eliciting information in furtherance of prosecution. This request would be improper, and I would decline in the interests of justice.

I have no reason to lead me to believe that Assange is on the run from anything larger than his own PR machine. It's perverse that this story has increasingly drifted from focusing on Manning to focusing on Assange.

I hope this clarifies things for you from my end. I've been entirely candid with you, and hope you'll update with a clarification from my end.

"Salon" impresses me

[spydabyte]

Unlike the summary posted above, the article is very unbiased. I'm surprised how sensational slashdot has become on issues like this. This isn't about some hacker wanting street cred, it's about an agent of the government getting a criminal to talk. Salon even stops slander found in other articles that is just journalism upon journalism leads to US Government vs. WikiLeaks, which at this point looks completely ridiculous.

I for one congratulate Salon for this very well balanced article.

Re:"Salon" impresses me

[DeadCatX2]

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

[twoallbeefpatties]

He also qualifies both of those beliefs with quotes from Manning. From the quotes of Lamo's chat with Manning, it seems he believed that he actually was acting in the role of a whistleblower. He mentions his moral issues with what's going on:

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? ...it belongs in the public domain -information should be free - it belongs in the public domain - because another state would just take advantage of the information... try and get some edge - if its out in the open... it should be a public good.

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

Ya well

[Sycraft-fu]

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 public. That was the case with The Pentagon Papers. The reason Ellsberg leaked the documents was he felt that he had to. He had tried to contact Senators and have them deal with it, but they wouldn't. He was out of options more or less, and felt the only way to deal with it was public disclosure, that the public's need to know outweighed the oath he'd taken to keep classified information secret.

However this was not a case like that, it was a case of ego. Manning was pissed off (in part because apparently he'd been broken up with) and decided to act out on it, in this case by leaking documents. He may have felt they should be public, but his motivation was ego. Well guess what? When ego is involved, people like to brag. They can't help but run their mouth to show how awesome they are.

Personally I don't feel a lot of sympathy for him for that reason. Were this a case of a deep personal belief, I can respect that, however he was just being spiteful more or less. Also, if he is telling the truth about leaking a quarter million diplomatic cables it is clear he doesn't care. There is no way he read all of those and decided they all needed to be public, he's just leaking information indiscriminately.

Whatever the case, it isn't likely to go well for him. Given that this was done in the course of his duties as military personnel, he will most likely be tried by court marshal as per the UCMJ. Means he's not likely to find a sympathetic civilian jury.

That's the point

[twoallbeefpatties]

Read the article - that's part of what Glennwald is asking. He's asking, why would a 22-year-old Private with access to high-security information get onto AIM and spill his guts about an issue that could get him thrown into jail for a long time with some guy that he's never met before? Something is funny about the whole notation.

Re:That's the point

[snowgirl]

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

[lawpoop]

Maybe he's a run-of-the-mill stupid, naive, thinks-he-knows-everything 22-year-old how royally fucked up in the traditional way, being at that age where you have too much power and too little wisdom?

Citation?

[twoallbeefpatties]

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.

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?

Now with tags!

[amanicdroid]

ggreenwald: Good Gawker post on Wired's concealment of the Lamo-Manning chat logs: [is.gd]

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

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:Oh dear

[dangitman]

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.

Thank you for your service

[Sprouticus]

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.

Re:Thank you for your service

[harrytuttle777]

Hell Yea. Sometimes the best service that you can do for your country is calling into question those who are using the military industrial complex to service their own needs rather then the needs of their country. National security should not be used as a pretense to cover up politically unpopular 'mistakes'

-Not all the enemies of freedom are overseas. Some of them are right here close to home, tightly nestled in a warm blanket political influence and corporate nepotism.

His actions

[Sycraft-fu]

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, he'd be demoted for assaulting another solider, and he felt like his family wasn't supporting him. That is not a mindset that to me sounds like ground work for a rational decision. Sounds to me like he was angry, and the military was the target that bore the brunt of his anger. He may claim it was a moral decision, but people are able to rationalize all kinds of things. To me it sounds like ego.

Finally there's the 260,000 diplomatic cables he claims to have released, but that have not yet been seen. Now there's one of two ways this goes:

1) He really did leak a quarter million pieces of classified correspondence. In this case, it is a purse ego move as there's no way he could have looked at them all and decided they were relevant. He was just shotgun releasing everything he could, since his ego told him that he was the good guy and whatever he does was right since it gets back at those that hurt him.

2) He made it all up, in an attempt to appear more competent, more powerful, etc than he really was. That is pure ego, making things up for the purpose of appearance.

So all in all, to me it looks like the guy was driven by his ego, not his conscience, to do what he did.

Re:His actions

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:It was the right thing to do...

[SunSpot505]

But Manning might not have done anything wrong either, and Lamo himself admitted that he had not seen any proof of wrong doing, other than the fact that Manning claimed to have released these documents.

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.

Greenwald's suspicion is probably true

[Burz]

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.

You don't say?

[shiftless]

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.

Inconsistency in the story

[1 inch punch]

>>Lamo says that Manning thereafter sent him additional emails encrypted to his current PGP key, but that Lamo never bothered to decrypt them. Instead, Lamo claims he turned over all those Manning emails to the FBI without ever reading a single one of them. Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo -- what preceded and led to their chat -- are completely unknown.

The only way that the FBI could've read the emails without having Lamo himself first decrypt them, is to allow the FBI access to his secret key and password. You be the judge on the plausibility of that happening.

lol no

[Weezul]

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 not blame them for any violence. Arafat never seriously even sought that status.

I doubt online rights would suffer if Lameo got shot by one lone crazy with guns and NRA membership, but your public encouraging of said hypothetical gun nut makes rights activists look bad, and any concerted effort towards would be even worse.

If you feel like doing some good, how about helping convince slashdot, boing boing, etc. to impose a 1 year moratorium on wired.com links. Lameo is just a moron who tricked Manning. Wired has seriously violated journalistic integrity.