NPR: What Killed Adrian Lamo, The Hacker Who Turned In Whistleblower Chelsea Manning?

[Greg Newby]

On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 08:51:45PM +0000, jim bell wrote:
> NPR: What Killed Adrian Lamo, The Hacker Who Turned In Whistleblower Chelsea Manning?.
> https://www.npr.org/2019/09/19/760317486/the-mysterious-death-of-the-hacker-who-turned-in-chelsea-manning?ft=nprml&f=1001
> 

It seemed like a well-researched article. I was expecting it to be an audio story, but it's written.

It includes a 3-page FBI report on the HOPE conference, which was fun to read. (Disclaimer: I was the one who shepherded Adrian for the panel the article mentions; Also, I introduced him for another session, where he screened the "Hackers Wanted" film.)

The HOPE security people gave him very good support, making sure he was not physically threatened. But people were very, very vocal about their negative views on him as a snitch. As described in the article.

I always thought he was a sad character: lonely, and marching to the beat of a different drummer. The "Hackers Wanted" film supports this view.

The article has a hand-written note from Chelsea saying she holds no ill will towards Adrian - this was from just the past few days. Given the deception by Adrian from their chat session, way back pre-arrest, I'm surprised by this. Adrian clearly believed, in that instance and others, that the ends justified the means.

The timing of this NPR article is due to Adrian's extradition hearing, scheduled for February 2020. With Chelsea refusing to witness for the feds (and spending time in jail as a penalty for this contempt of court), Adrian might have been a key witness for events around the disclosure of secure documents, and their eventual ingestion to Wikileaks.

But that's another story. Is there a US judge who will believe that trying to brute force a Windows password is espionage? Stay tuned...
 - Greg