Wikileaks Source Outed To Stroke Hacker's Own Ego 347
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.
First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want to get caught keep your damn mouth shut.
Adrian Lamo? for serious? (Score:0, Insightful)
Yes, I think this hacker is aiming for all the lulz he can get. Adrian Lamo? Adrian Lmao? indeed....
Re:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Manning must not have been able to operate Google (Score:3, Insightful)
He actually believed that Lamo was an ordained minister, and that his chat with him constituted a confession?
I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of difficult to follow that advice when the lawbreaking in question consists solely of not keeping your mouth shut.
Good Grief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shocking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So.... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
That's odd you feel that way, considering the amateurs outnumber the pros 1000 to 1.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, actually I'm the douchebag here. Durr!
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Ya well (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't care (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree 100%, but with the story backlog, and subsequent questionable informants surrounding this case and how it progresses to the present, provides pretty solid evidence of active Counter-Intelligence being performed against entities around WIki-Leaks, facilitated by the US Government/Military.
The military not coming clean about a leaked video is only half the damage being perpetrated here against citizens both foreign and domestic.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
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:So.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:3, Insightful)
"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:I don't care (Score:2, Insightful)
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....
Why did he need "Limo" in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because they can just label them "terrorists" instead of "civilians".
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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:
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.
It was the right thing to do... (Score:2, Insightful)
Releasing embassy cables could reveal names of operatives, and details of secret operations that really should be kept secret. Just because it's secret doesn't mean it's unethical or some abuse of power. There's plenty of people out there collecting information for our government about real threats in the world, and those people put their lives at risk for a good cause (most of them). They haven't done anything wrong. Yet they might find themselves in a Chinese prison never to be seen again once their name is released, and for no reason than some out-of-control monkey who wanted to create "anarchy." I would've done the same.
Re:I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
His actions (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Persona non grata (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:3, Insightful)
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:I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org]
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:Thank you for your service (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:5, Insightful)
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:It was the right thing to do... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
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:That's the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Just to clarify - if you find that he really is what he claims, does that mean you should trust him more - or less?
Re:His actions (Score:3, Insightful)
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:I don't care (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Persona non grata (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:3, Insightful)
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:So.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First rule of breaking the law (Score:4, Insightful)
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.