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Adrian Lamo Explains His Decision To Expose Bradley Manning
ilikenwf writes "Whether you agree with his rationale for doing so or not, Adrian Lamo has come forward to discuss his reasoning for exposing Bradley Manning. Manning, now in federal custody, leaked thousands of U.S. intelligence files and documents. Lamo's side of the story shows that he was concerned for Manning's mental health and stability, and for the lives Manning was risking by releasing classified material — Afghan informants, for instance. Either way, this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it."
but I think a few years in solitary isn't the best thing for one's mental health and stability.
He went to him for advice.
Notice his bizarre reference to Babylon 5 that seems to be without irony. He's obviously a fan, but did he miss the message the show had about how a group of soldiers had to follow their conscience and expose war crimes and corruption from their government at home. These characters had to deal with propaganda from the government, professional snitches (Nightwatch) and threats of treason and imprisonment from their corrupt government. I guess Adrian Lamo was rooting for President Clarke all along.
Yeah, because when I'm "concerned" about somebody's mental stability, the FIRST thing I think of is sending them off to be held for 900+ days in solitary confinement and psychologically tortured.
This sort of post-hoc rationalization is actually *more* embarrassing than Lamo just coming and saying, "yeah, I did it for the fame. Suck my dick!"
Now I'm going to RTFA and see what cover story did they come up with.
Turning him over to a government who have since spent much time making his life as unpleasant as possible. I'm sure that's done wonders for his psychological well-being.
I'm still also waiting to hear who had their lives put at risk by Manning... More to do with risk to certain peoples reputations, and the credibility of the US government.
It'd be nice to see Anonymous take on Lamo as a new "project." Someone ought to teach him that there's a price that comes with being a paid informant, even in a police state.
Because Lamo can't write a coherent message to save his life.
But the message boils down to "You can't handle the truth. I'm far more intelligent than you are".
Turncoat.
Hasn't he milked enough fame out of this already?
He's not a respected hacker or computer expert or whatever the fuck he thinks he is. He's just a shit heel troll who should be ignored.
Free Bradley!
Yeah, I would try to clear me name by claiming ultruistism too.
Do you mean "altruism"?
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
I can't believe these were his primary goals at the time. I think he got into something that was way more than he expected, and he pulled a c.y.a. move and sent Manning down the river. Saying he did it for the good of the Afghan people that might be named in the documents seems revisionist. But I guess only he knows, so he gets to tell whatever story he wants.
"Information wants to be free". They don't mind promoting other peoples' secrets, so it should be no problem to expose theirs.
That name is just too funny:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lamo
1. used their real name w the accounts they used to commit their crime
2. told somebody what they're doing
3. don't understand enough about computers to not get caught
4. used their home IP
Missing anything? There's a trend forming here...
2012: Lamo: Hero, Manning: Traitor
2018: Lamo: Traitor, Manning: Nobel Peace Prize
2020: Manning released . . .
Either way, this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it."
Manning never "bragged" about anything. He was reaching out to a fellow hacker (who claimed to be a priest that Manning could confess to without consequence).
Manning was in a hostile environment with NO friends and with leaders who were corrupt and untrustworthy. His own father hated him for his homosexuality. He had nobody and was under an extreme amount of stress while trying to expose the corruption of his government. Almost ANYBODY would have made the mistake of trying to seek out a person that would be like-minded.
If this Adrian Lamo were honest and not just trying to save what is left of his "journalism" career, then he would be doing everything in his power to try and free Manning for standing by his principles.
Manning was and still is an eyewitness in a fucked up system he did not consider competent enough to care for consequences of their activities, so he went public. Thats not a question of mental health, but one of common sense.
Unfortunately he came across Lamo, whose condition would make me go very far away from him as he might be in a situation that is not advantageous to discretion. And i am not necessarily talking about the FBI here.
there's a good way and a bad way to leak information to the press. Wholesale dumps that destroy innocuous diplomatic relationships and endanger spies and contacts is a bad way.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Lamo was arrested in 2003 for breaking into the NY Times website along with Yahoo, Microsoft and other. Before that he broke into various corporate networks, Lexis-Nexis, etc. Facing a possible 15 year prison sentence he took a plea bargain with reduced it to 6 month to be spent under house arrest at his parent's home. How did he get such a sweet deal? Was part of the deal an agreement to become an FBI informant possibly? Because if the Anonymous arrests have proven one thing, when hackers are faced with serving serious jail time, they will rat their own mothers out to cut a deal.
Strange that spell check doesn't work on slashdot input fields, but it does on other forums like reddit.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
One has to pick their path.
The things that really sticks out in this saga are 1) Manning had legal resources available to him to expose wrong doing in the classified world. He chose to ignore that route and used the media instead. 2) Lamo looked at the shear number of documents and had to make a choice to either do nothing with the possibility of many people being killed, or turn Manning in with the possibility of facing the death penalty. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
This saga has parallels in history. Think back to the first atomic bombs dropped on Japan. There were those in the program that had to come to grips with the fact that the work they did led to 250,000+ dead. They had basically two choices. Accept the notion that dropping those bombs led the the end of the war and ultimately reduce the total number of dead, or go crazy thinking otherwise, since we can never know for sure.
Right or wrong, Lamo chose his path and I will not fault him for it. Manning on the other hand choose poorly.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
If he was truly concerned about the leak, he could have informed the DOD about a leak and not the leaker.
Odd that this is not addressed.
Yeah, I would try to clear me name by claiming ultruistism too.
Do you mean "altruism"?
Except with rocket boots.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
He had evidence of espionage and turned over that evidence to authorities who could act on it. Why does he need to justify that?
I read the article expecting to hear how Adriana Lima came forward and exposed for Peyton Manning.
I would have turned him in, too. Violating a security clearance IS a major felony, regardless of motivation, and releasing classified information without authority is just flat-out wrong. I am far more sympathetic to Wikileaks and Julian Assange, but really don't give one whit what they do to Manning.
For an insight into how Lamo thinks, take a close look at the baseball cap he's wearing in the article.
Q: Why?
Lamo: Because I became FBI's bitch
Because it was the right thing to do. Very simple.
Conservative, mod down for violating
And I'm of the opinion that Manning will be the winner.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
He's the kind of fuckhead who would be ratting his friends out an invading force the week after they rolled over his town. He's loyal to power, doesn't have any semblance of principles that exist outside of worshiping power, and therefore he's a fucking model American (or German or Frenchman or whomever is running the show).
He probably spends weekends having wet dreams about exposing plots that discredit Old Glory, or any of the principles she has pretended to have over the past 200 years. He sleeps with on hand on a flagpole, stroking it erotically as he tries to imagine a thousand dead bodies and ten thousand eviscerated limbs and container ships full of blood pouring over his naked body to celebrate the March of Freedom -- making a pitstop in weak Arab States before it returns to bring justice to the nigger Filipinos and nigger Mexicanos and Panamanians and Nicaraguans and Hatians, fouling his financial lebensraum and ruining a diverse America predicated on the phallus worship of power and of the gun and all her related orgasms of control and death -- as long as Freedom worships American Freedom unconditionally. Unconditionally, as judicious as God: you are either with Us, or you are against Us and you are doomed to die if you do not obey. But you won't have to wait for hell in the afterlife. This is currently available for overnight delivery, if you call now.
Just before he climaxes, a tear forms in Adrian's eye as he imagines how glorious and good he is, offering the savage Arab a chance to get on their knees and sign up for slavery instead of being killed on the spot. He revels in the moment that God was in the room when his Lord and Savior, George Herbert Walker, decided in his infinite wisdom to kill a few hundred thousand Iraqis and displace two million more in order to improve women's rights by sending tens of thousands of them into prostitution after killing their husbands on the battlefield. In his own way, Adrian has freed the Iraqi people from the tyranny of owning their own resources, and replaced their struggle against corruption of their government with a loss of basic security, infrastructure, and education.
And when he does climax, Adrian thinks about the power he protects. He thinks about raping and murdering a prisoner and then helping cover it up without having to answer to any semblance of a court. He heaves his entire body into rapture as he pictures an innocent man being electrocuted to death by someone from the Agency while Bradley Manning is forced to watch from a prison cell, crying for mercy, as part of his "non-torture" permanent solitary confinement that Adrian bravely initiated because... why?
Because in Adrian's sick fantasy, Bradley Manning is the individual who needs to be cured of dangerous fantasies. But the truth is that Adrian Lamo is a hallow imitation of a human being, and when he passes away there probably won't be a soul left to save. Lamo will worship whoever has the biggest gun, and it will serve him well because parasites make up for their lack of intelligence and abandoned independence with dependence on larger, more powerful entities who will accept fealty from any random piece of shit from the street, including Adrian Lamo.
... this guy is quite a Lame-O
This submission text is tainted by the poster's personal opinions - opinions which are, to say the very least, not unanimously shared. If you read the article it is striking how Lamo seems completely bereft of any sympathy for Manning, how he might have possibly fooled him into confessing by promising to treat it in confidence - and how he likes to hide behind complex (made up?) words and phrases instead of answering the interviewer's questions directly. One for the psychologists...
Wow. The moral fiber here in ./ has shaken my faith in humanity. So many of you fancy yourselves hackers or part of the hacker culture and saying what Lamo did was traitorous, without even reading a single word of his explanation. I thought what he said in the interview was well thought out and highlights a highly intelligent, and sane person. Of course, he did have 2 years to erudite, but he is by no means any of the shit spewed here. Maybe you all should really read the article before resorting to your knee-jerk ways. He may be lying through his teeth, but everything he said in the article holds a true message. Regardless of who he is, he did the right thing, and it may be tough for the stupid of you to comprehend, but that his words match his actions means that this was the truth from the very start. Whatever happened to Manning while in custody of the law is something Lamo had no control over. I'd turn all of you retards in for backing Manning up. If Manning weren't stupid and really wanted to do good, then he would have filtered the leak to only expose what needed to be. But noooooooooooooo...
He did it because he's a cunt. And everyone will know he's a cunt for the rest of his life.
Lamo's concerns regarding disclosure of Afgahan informants from Wikileaks are thus far unfounded, and his claim that "WikiLeaks has a history of hand-waving away the consequences of their disclosures" doesn't seem to jive with the facts in this case. Below is a quote from the relevant section of the Wikipedia article.
Informants named
Some, including Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.
On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."
In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.
Yes, I know I'm threadjacking an FP, but the issue that is often made of this so far non-issue I find annoying, particularly because it tends to overshadow the facts that were revealed.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Civil disobedience is still disobedience. That's part of the fun of being this sort of activist.
It kills me all of this mindless hero worship for Manning. I don't care that he was gay even though it's obvious he had serious mental issues and should have never been allowed in the service much less given a security clearance. What really bothers me is that after leaking the information he could have likely gone unnoticed afterward. Wanna know how he got caught? He was bragging and making jokes about what he did with Adrian Lamo. Yes sir, that makes him a real hero. Manning was a real bradass...LOL On the other hand I don't agree with the government going after Assange. He's a Swedish citizen that owes no loyalty to the US. If all he did was receive and retransmit what Manning sent them then that's fine. If Assange helped him though that might be a different story. I also don't agree with the mistreatment of Manning. Someone needs to be brought to task for this. We have combatants in custody that are likely being treated better. I wonder. Just how many people may have died due to Manning's leak.
Should read "running over a German POW's foot WITH A TRUCK".
..Mr G-man.
Applying any SciFi story theme to a real-life situation is generally dumb .... but if we are to play the game, than I have to ask: why do you automatically assume manning was the good guy? There has never been (and never will be) a perfect nation or government, but some governments actually try to do the right thing more-often than others do. What twisted you so badly that you want to assume the US is the bad guy? That position IS an assumption since you lack all the info; Manning's leaks are far from a complete global picture of ALL American (and non-American) military and diplomatic activity (most of which was NOT leaked). Where are the equivalent leaks of Russian data? Chinese data? Afghan data? Jihadist data? Perhaps Manning was a stupid dupe tricked into serving "the shadows" and his data dump, along with other acts by others who were similarly duped, undermined a government that was generally feckless but trying-to-protect-its-citizens .... but is now becoming so corrupted and cowardly that it is not willing to even speak of "the shadows" and its officials have been spotted having quiet conversations with representatives of "the shadows" ceding territory to them, agreeing not to resist them so strongly, etc. Representatives of "the shadows" have been seen in the executive building and even with some legislators where there has been talk that the population needs to be indoctrinated into not thinking negatively about "the shadows". Indeed, perhaps it will become unsafe for anybody to say anything negative about "the shadows"
Now, for "the shadows", substitute "Jihadists"
Don't like that? Think Manning is a hero? In the B5 storyline, Bester is a hero to many and the surviving members of the Icarus crew are absolutely convinced that they and their bug-like friends are the "good guys" .... oh, and of course the people influenced by "the shadows" leaked plenty of information about Sheridan and his associates ....
As I said, SciFi does not map directly to reality ........ but I am fascinated by all the sicko traitor-worship that left-leaners have for Manning; the twerp was not a civilian or a journalist, he was giving aid to the enemy in time of war while under oath and wearing the uniform .... he should have been put before a firing squad and shot within hours of being found. We will never know how many people lost their lives because of him but what we DO know is that he made international relations worse for ANY US President (including Obama) People/governments who do/might help the US must be more cautious and be worried about being exposed. It's likely Manning contributed to the deaths of more Americans and allies in Afghanistan (for a number of complex reasons, including the effects the leaks have had on political support and related schedules and plans) and that as a result of the looming pull-out from Afghanistan (and the changes made to get out quicker) more civilians there are likely to be punished for listening to music or flying kites, more women and girls killed for seeking an education or medical care, etc. In short: Manning is a vile, twisted, evil, wart on the posterior of the human race, right along with the "people" he assisted. The human rights abuses he has helped extend (by undermining the people who were at least trying to mitigate some of it) may ripple through Afghanistan for generations. The people manning undermined were the elected representatives of the US implementing an admittedly flawed policy trying to deal with a very dangerous and complex world. Manning was never elected to anything. He took it upon himself to hijack policy without authority and with a belief he could escape all accountability.
I was hoping someone would have killed that pathetic Judas weasel already. Fucking boot licking fascist-loving FBI dick sucking piece of shit. He represents the New America. The one where we are all agents of the FBI looking to get brownie points with our benevolent daddy-government. I feel so sorry for the government that their murder and torture and racist piece of shit soldiers might be exposed for what they really are. The truth hurts I guess.
Adrian Lamo is an attention whore. He needs it, he feeds off it, and when people start forgetting about him he becomes increasingly more desperate to bring his doings back into the spotlight.
Lamo is a disgusting, worthless piece of shit. He'd fuck over anyone for any reason if it meant he could catch a few more seconds of fame.
Being a self centered asshole, he'll never understand for a second what he did to Manning, or what Manning is suffering through. That's completely irrelevant to Lamo. He doesn't empathize with other people, he doesn't understand altruism. All he knows is how to fulfill his own needs at any given time.
I hope the media ignores Adrian, and I hope at some point in his life he understands what he did to Manning.
Why did Lamo snitch on Manning, a good guess would be that Lamo worked as an agent for the Feds ever since his arrest in 2003. Where in the leaked documents were the names of Afghan informants released?
Don't tell ass holes like Adrian Lamo.
Snitches get stitches lol
But Lamo could not have known beforehand that there would be no fallout from the release. It seems a reasonable fear to be had.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
'Although none of the Wired articles ever mention this, the first Lamo-Manning communications were not actually via chat. Instead, Lamo told me that Manning first sent him a series of encrypted emails which Lamo was unable to decrypt because Manning "encrypted it to an outdated PGP key of mine" [PGP is an encryption program]."
What self-respecting hacker loses his old PGP key?
"After receiving this first set of emails, Lamo says he replied - despite not knowing who these emails were from or what they were about - by inviting the emailer to chat with him on AOL IM, and provided his screen name to do so."
"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.
What self-respecting hacker doesn't bother to read his email. Why would it be necessary at this point for Lamo to claim not to have read the emails?
"Thus, the actual initial communications between Manning and Lamo - what preceded and led to their chat - are completely unknown. Lamo refuses to release the emails or chats other than the small chat snippets published by Wired". link
AccountKiller
Snitches deserve no respect.
If he ever goes to prison for anything, he will find out
how snitches are respected when the lights go out.
be ashamed and disgraced. What an a**hole. Hope i meet him in an dark alley someday....
Wasn't it Assange who stated that he did not care who was exposed or might be killed by the release of the information.
AL: Assange went on to say " we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen", and that if anyone were conclusively killed because of WikiLeaks, they could take comfort knowing: "Well, we will review our procedures" upon proof of their death. I have a different vision of good, one where high ideals don't excuse any crime or atrocity because someone meant well.
So let me get this straight, mowing down innocent civilians with an attack helicopter, that's ok, but exposing it to the NY Times, THAT IS THE ATROCITY? What a fucked up individual. Lamo is trash and a rat.
Adrian Lamo spoke at a HOPE conference Informants Panel some years ago about this very subject... ugh anyway
1. he's a rat, snitch whatever and he did because it doesn't take a genius to realize that if someone tells you they just stole a truck load of top secret diplomat cables and is going to release them, the government is going to send people to jail and you have to make a decision if you want to be one of those people.
2. all the flimsy excuses he's given so far sound to me like something a FBI would have to said to him to make him feel better about ratting Manley out, whereas Lamo would have looked less like a creep if he just admitted to ratting Manley out because he didn't want to go to jail.
He either had no concern for the well-being of Manning and is just saying so or he is utter and complete fool for thinking that ratting him would result in anything other than utter persecution and kafkaesquely hellish existence.
Either he is an informer and enemy of free men pleading for forgiveness or a fool so bad he's got to suffer at least some repercussions.
I've no mercy to spare him.
Claiming Manning committed treason is like saying copyright infringement is theft.
Manning saw all the innocents whose lives were taken, and did the best thing he knew how to save more lives. If any lives were put at risk by the leak, they are far outweighed by the lives endangered by the military continuing to kill in secrecy, without consequence. Manning didn't commit treason. The US Military commits far more treacherous acts daily.
He also could not know that there would be fallout from the release. What he did was purely speculative. It seems like the prudent thing to do for someone who has genuine concerns about taking an action that would get someone locked up for the rest of the person's life, Lamo could have reviewed the documents himself or inquired about what precautions were being taken. Instead, he seems to have based his decision on what he reads in the newspapers and without contacting any of the parties involved.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
His keepers have him doing damage control PR.
If you leak only certain things, well then the argument can be made that you did it out of conscience. You saw these things and said "The public needs to know this. Even though I took an oath not to reveal this, this public needs to know, it is more important." This is the kind of thing that happened with the Pentagon Papers.
However when you just go and wholesale release whatever you can grab, well that kinda goes out the window. You didn't do it for conscience reasons, you did it for other reasons, ego it would appear in this case. You want to "get them" or whatever. It wasn't a reasoned action.
Well, intent should and does matter in what you do. The reason behind your actions can be as important as the actions themselves.
There is also the issue of harm and potential harm caused vs what was gained. While it seems to be taken as an article of faith on /. that extreme government crimes were revealed, I've yet to have anyone point them out to me. The only thing that seems to get referred to is the "collateral murder" video which if you watch unedited clearly shows the opposite: There was no crime, the soldiers engaged per the rules of war (which are quite different from regular civilian laws).
A selective leak of information that the public needs to know can be a very noble act. A big dump of anything classified you get your hands on is not.
Adrian Lamo is an attention seeking whore, it's why he went to wired and media with the scoop instead of keeping it simple and reporting only to the FBI.
I can't be bothered hearing what he has to say anymore, frankly, he's not worth the steam off my piss.
The real reason is that he hasn't had any attention for almost a decade, when he was on The Screen Savers and stuff after all of his hacking pursuits, so he had to do something to get back on the news.
You can't directly tie the leaks to any particular case of harm for the same reason that you can't tie cigarette smoking to any particular lung cancer death of a smoker. You can, however, determine that the chances are very high that smoking has killed people--you just can't name any particular individual.
It's the same situation with the leaks. The Taliban has a long history of seeking out and killing people that they suspect are informants. When some random informant is killed, we have no idea how the Taliban got information on that informant. It's possible the Taliban decided to go completely against all of their past behavior, and decide to not target any of the leaked informants unless they found independent corroborating evidence--and that is about as likely as every lung cancer death of a smoker being due to causes unrelated to their smoking.
Really Paul? You think it was irrational to fulfill the oath taken and the agreements signed concerning classified information because you (irrationally) believe it would have null effect? How could Lamo or anyone else concisely review the documents for scope? I suppose you have experts instantly available, for free I might add, that just provide this service on call?
You need to the read the Wikipedia article and then provide an intelligent response. What you have typed is pure speculation.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
"Afghan informants, for instance" Still pushing this bullshit?
I took the same oath when I joined the Navy, and part of that oath is to swear to uphold the Constitution. Manning had information on activities that are clearly unconstitutional. Your argument is what the establishment wants to hear: we must protect secret, illegal government activities that harm millions, if not billions, to protect a few people involved with these programs, even though no evidence can be provided that anyone has directly come to harm from these activities. It seems likely that any harm, even speculatively, that would have come from these disclosures would have been presented by top officials and featured on front page of the Washington Post. But there has been no evidence to support the claims. Lamo made a poor decision.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Manning is responsible for the way Manning was treated.
Manning knew the consequences of his actions if he were caught, that's part of the process of getting a clearance.
And you had ever actually carried a security clearance you would know that.
Lamo's concerns regarding disclosure of Afgahan informants from Wikileaks are thus far unfounded, and his claim that "WikiLeaks has a history of hand-waving away the consequences of their disclosures" doesn't seem to jive with the facts in this case. Below is a quote from the relevant section of the Wikipedia article.
Informants named
Some, including Barack Obama and Hamid Karzai, raised concerns that the detailed logs had exposed the names of Afghan informants, thus endangering their lives. Partially in response to this criticism, Wikileaks announced that it has sought the help of the Pentagon in reviewing a further 15,000 documents before releasing them. The Pentagon said it had not been contacted by Wikileaks. However, blogger Glenn Greenwald presented evidence that the Pentagon had, in fact, been contacted, and that it had refused the request.
On 11 August, a spokesman for the Pentagon told the Washington Post that "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents", although the spokesman asserted "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field." On 17 August, the Associated Press reported that "so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."
In October, the Pentagon concluded that the leak "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods", and that furthermore "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Both Wikileaks and Greenwald pointed to this report as clear evidence that the danger caused by the leak had been vastly overstated.
Yes, I know I'm threadjacking an FP, but the issue that is often made of this so far non-issue I find annoying, particularly because it tends to overshadow the facts that were revealed.
When you're talking about a leak that big there is no way to know what it could expose. Adrian had no choice, and Bradley Manning betrayed his oath.
He also could not know that there would be fallout from the release. What he did was purely speculative. It seems like the prudent thing to do for someone who has genuine concerns about taking an action that would get someone locked up for the rest of the person's life, Lamo could have reviewed the documents himself or inquired about what precautions were being taken. Instead, he seems to have based his decision on what he reads in the newspapers and without contacting any of the parties involved.
Reviewed the documents himself? Do you know how many documents it was ? We haven't even read all the cables and we haven't been able to review it. It was from the 1970s to 2010 or something.
I saw nothing unconstitutional with State Dept cables. You're talking about a different leak.
You can't directly tie the leaks to any particular case of harm for the same reason that you can't tie cigarette smoking to any particular lung cancer death of a smoker. You can, however, determine that the chances are very high that smoking has killed people--you just can't name any particular individual.
It's the same situation with the leaks. The Taliban has a long history of seeking out and killing people that they suspect are informants. When some random informant is killed, we have no idea how the Taliban got information on that informant. It's possible the Taliban decided to go completely against all of their past behavior, and decide to not target any of the leaked informants unless they found independent corroborating evidence--and that is about as likely as every lung cancer death of a smoker being due to causes unrelated to their smoking.
It's also possible that certain informants might not actually die in a way which would allow us to think they were killed. Accidents, illnesses, natural causes.
That's not treason these days. Deliberately and knowingly selling US government owned weapons to some guys that blew up over 150 US marines and a pile of civilians in the previous year is not the treason it looks like and is instead the act of a true Patriot that good Republicans should vote for, according to election PR at the time. Against that measure leaking some stuff that over a million people had access to just does not rate.
Anybody that cared enough about that information and had the resources to turn one of those million (or a secondary source such as someone working for a US ally) could already get access to that information.
It'd be nice to see Anonymous take on Lamo as a new "project." Someone ought to teach him that there's a price that comes with being a paid informant, even in a police state.
There is no indication that he has been paid or that he is being paid. Do you see him in a brand new car? A brand new house? What payment? They didn't even keep his identity a secret. He's known as "the snitch". I think you should do your research, because I can tell you based on mine he has not been paid.
What a liar. I bet you purchased some asbestos pants.
You know what you're talking about. That is exactly the problem.
Mod this guy up! I don't understand how people can be so pissed off about this. It's not Lamo's fault for how Manning was/is treated. If you read the chat logs and everything, Manning seemed really unstable mentally - I think that the options of him shooting up his fellow soldiers was a concern in Lamo's mind, if you read around. On top of all that, Manning's life in exchange for whoever was mentioned in the dumped files is a worthy exchange IMO.
If he'd come to Lamo and said something like "I'm uncomfortable because I've seen how our government is handling things, and I need to find a proper way to voice and prove this without further threatening anyone's life," I have a feeling Lamo would've actually helped him.
If it were a situation where Manning were putting the lives of sources at risk then his life should not be considered more valuable than theirs. It's a messed up decision to have to make but I can understand it. There is no way Lamo had the time to review all those documents to know sources would or wouldn't be compromised and if he's going on probability then the probability is high/unacceptable when you're talking about a leak that big.
What are you talking about? Diplomatic relations were extremely strained and are still being rebuilt.
Yes it may have made sense to release critical information regarding military abuses. However the information was not read or sifted through in advance, instead it was dumped wholesale even though the vast majority of it was diplomatic gossip.
If Adrian Lamo really is a hero who saved lives why isn't Obama, Biden, Senators, Congressmen, or the establishment itself thanking him? Rewarding him? Calling him brave? The way he's being treated should reveal a lot about how he is truly viewed by them.
Think about it. Bradley Manning is allegedly being tortured. Adrian Lamo is being completely ignored by the powers that be and not receiving any moral support. What is going on with that?
He had evidence of espionage and turned over that evidence to authorities who could act on it. Why does he need to justify that?
And they are calling him that unfairly I might add. And not only that but the US government isn't morally defending him either. So they are basically letting him get called a snitch and traitor etc.
Where are all those Congressmen to defend Lamo? Where is Obama? Where is FoxNews now?
Cablegate wasn't about any crimes. That was entirely political and that is the worst leak.
I'm going by what he claims he was thinking. He claims he did what he did to protect the lives of sources. That is as far away from being a snitch as possible. A snitch is someone who would leak to the enemy.
Trying to make it look like he was concerned. When you look at the chat transcripts, Lamo just badgers Manning for info.
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You can't directly tie the leaks to any particular case of harm for the same reason that you can't tie cigarette smoking to any particular lung cancer death of a smoker. You can, however, determine that the chances are very high that smoking has killed people--you just can't name any particular individual.
It's the same situation with the leaks. The Taliban has a long history of seeking out and killing people that they suspect are informants. When some random informant is killed, we have no idea how the Taliban got information on that informant. It's possible the Taliban decided to go completely against all of their past behavior, and decide to not target any of the leaked informants unless they found independent corroborating evidence--and that is about as likely as every lung cancer death of a smoker being due to causes unrelated to their smoking.
And worse we probably can't expect the government to admit that the leak did result in harm to intelligence sources. It would make the government look bad.
It really isn't too hard to find.
Go to Wikileaks.
Or Google. A quick google gives this:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2028283,00.html
But you don't want the truth. You can't handle the truth. You want it to be Anti-USA because you're an ignorant arrogant fuckwit who hates the FACT that the USA is one of the biggest if not the biggest terrorist organisations the world has EVER seen.
And here I was thinking that the USA has a law against sex trafficking and paedophile rings.
Turns out it is all fine and legal.
fuck, forgot to log in?
WASHINGTON—Early Saturday morning, The US Internet Cyber-Talk Attribution Agency (ICTAA), along with ICTAA's First Post Validation and Research Group and Fr1st p0sT Incident Response Team, the DOD's Anomalous Authentication and Anonymity Prevention Task Force, and Slashdot Editter's Local 1252 completed their preliminary investigation—message text analysis, server log examination, system administrator interviews, password strength measurement, poster profiling and pattern matching. According to ICTAA press secretary Dick Goatse, ICTAA expects to issue the joint inquiry's official findings report late this week.
Conditionally speaking as an Anonymous Coward, an official closely involved in the investigation stated that "[the official report] will, in all likelihood, conclude that both of those messages [#42480599 and #42480641] were written by a single author, and that this individual forgot to log in."
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Ah yes, Mr. Lamo: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/hacker_pr.html
Felony? How about violating a major treaty? The UN Convention Against Torture - signed by that hippie Ronald Reagan - requires prosecution of those who commit torture. A law that Obama has spent 4 years violating by protecting Bushco torturers from prosecution. Then there's the warrantless wiretapping, lying us into 2 wars, violations of the War Powers Act.
You "but he broke the laaaaaw" guys are all a bunch of fucking hacks. You complain about how Manning broke the law, while ignoring the lawbreaking that Manning revealed. You bleat about how Manning violated the UCMJ, ignoring that the UCMJ prohibits unlawful command influence and requires that trials should take place within 120 days. Manning was held for several times that number before ever seeing the inside of a courtroom.
Ego, or weak-sauce tautology? If it was ego, Manning would have been publicly running to some state-owned Russian newspaper, not anonymously handing the cables over to Wikileaks.
Again, anonymous release of mass corruption and criminality from the United States government and it's allies. How was it not done out of conscience?
So, your attention to detail has been as selective as your storyline.
What "rules of war" allow you first attack unarmed civilians in a country that's not yours, and then do your best to kill anyone attempting to rescue the dying? When other people do that we call it terrorism.
I am not a US Constitution expert but it seems that the presumption of innocence and right to a speedy trial is well establish in amendments 5, 6 and 14 to that document. With that in mind I have corrected the most egregious problem with the summary:
"Whether you agree with his rationale for doing so or not, Adrian Lamo has come forward to discuss his reasoning for accusing Bradley Manning. Manning, now in federal custody, allegedly leaked thousands of U.S. intelligence files and documents. Lamo's side of the story shows that he was concerned for Manning's mental health and stability, and for the lives Manning was allegedly risking by releasing classified material — Afghan informants, for instance. Either way, this goes to show that if you're going to release stolen/hacked documents, it's best you do it anonymously and don't brag about it.
Whether or not the allegations are true is a matter for the (seemingly absent) speedy trial to decide... not the public rationalisations of the accuser or the court of public opinion.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
I'm sure ol' Benedict also had a ready supply of justifications.
Lamo: perfect name.
you horrible, self-serving ass.
Everyone please support the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://www.bradleymanning.org/ )