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

[Greg Newby]

Correction: I didn't mean Adrian's extradition hearing, of course. I meant Julian's. 

On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 05:22:11PM -0700, Greg Newby wrote:
> 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