MIT students helped WikiLeaks suspect, hacker says

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/08/01/afghanistan.wikileaks.suspect/index.html?hpt=T1

by MykalM • 16 years ago

24 14 16 years ago

hartror2• 16 years ago

Hmm a tenuous bit of second hand information and it would be nice for the military to have someone outside their ranks to blame.

Is anyone else thinking Adrian Lamo is trolling for attention? Never hurts your career prospects to have your face plastered on the news repeatedly in this way.

adelevie• 16 years ago

Lamo is definitely trolling for attention.

biturd• 16 years ago

Am I the only one who thinks Lamo is sort of a jerk in this whole ordeal. I feel he was covering his own butt out of fear, and did nothing patriotic in any way at all.

wooster• 16 years ago

Treason charges are nothing to sneeze at. Someone like Lamo (with his history/record) has a huge incentive to stay squeaky clean during something like this.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

The best way to stay out of this is by not talking to the media.

No comment is far more effective than any story.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

All he had to reply back with was "Yeah, and I killed Kennedy. Get real dude".

Gianteye2• 16 years ago

If I were involved in the high stakes game he is, I'd be a bit more emotional, a bit more eager to convey the fact that I'm a human being who makes decisions that have consequences outside the purvey of my own foresight.

But Lamo continuously seems like an emotionless machine. He gives speeches about damning a kid to life in prison and the moral dilemma of discretion when faced with illegal but possibly necessary civil disobedience with all the passion and articulation of a Hall of Presidents automaton.

It's hard for me to get the impression that his actions are anything but calculated.

sometimes• 16 years ago

> It's hard for me to get the impression that his actions are anything but calculated.

but calculated to what end? are his motivations as crude as simply wanting to draw the world's attention towards him?

jawn• 16 years ago

He felt threatened by 2 MIT students? Surely Lamo must have knew that bradass87 and his alleged "accomplices" were not mafia heavy hitters.

In all seriousness, this is piss poor reporting.

Like others have pointed out, this is second hand information that makes no substantive link between Manning and the 2 unnamed MIT students. Surely the reporter could have deduced from Lamo's clues who the two MIT students were and followed up for comments or quotes from them.

Even taking this story at face value there are lots of unanswered critical questions.

Was Manning taught to use the "encryption software" with the purpose of enabling him to hide stolen information?

What encryption software was sent?

The meaning of encryption software is left intentionally vague. Was the software something like truecrypt or perhaps the MIT masterminds just sent Manning a link to a firefox installer...

It's a shame that this passes for journalism.

analogy• 16 years ago

Adrian Lamo is a violent psychopath. His ex girlfriend got a restraining order on him because he had attacked her with a stun gun.

KoZeN• 16 years ago

Any chance of come context to support your accusation and it's relevance to this situation?

Pahalial• 16 years ago

It is on his wikipedia page, sourced from this 2004 Wired article: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/hacker_pr.html

Lamo makes a point of refuting the accusation: http://pax.vox.com/library/post/citability-is-important.html

I found it interesting he only addressed the restraining order and not the general stalking behaviour or (alleged) stun gun use.

Edit: Not claiming this has any relevance to current events, I was just curious about the grandparent's claim.

hartror2• 16 years ago

A quick google search shows this to be unsubstantiated. Highly unlikely such a juicy tit bit wouldn't be on a reputable news site, let alone not on any site anywhere.

MIT students helped WikiLeaks suspect, hacker says

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