Hacker who gave up Wikileaks source dies
Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker best known for passing on information that led to the arrest of Chelsea Manning, has died aged 37. In online messaging conversations, Manning confided in him, describing confidential military material Manning had sent to Wikileaks.
[...] The cause of Lamo's death, confirmed to the BBC by the Sedgwick County coroner in Kansas, has not yet been made public.
[...] Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Friday described Lamo as a "petty conman and betrayer of basic human decency".
Related: Report: Iraq and Afghanistan WikiLeaks Disclosures Did Not Significantly Harm U.S. National Security
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A heavily redacted Department of Defense report concludes that documents leaked to WikiLeaks had no "significant strategic impact" on the war in Afghanistan and "[had] no direct personal impact on current and former senior US leadership in Iraq":
The publication of hundreds of thousands of secret US documents leaked by the Army soldier Chelsea Manning in 2010 had no strategic impact on the American war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, a newly released Pentagon analysis concluded.
The main finding of the Department of Defense report, written a year after the breach, was that Manning's uploading of more than 700,000 secret files to the open information organization WikiLeaks had no significant strategic effect on the US war efforts.
The belated publication of the analysis gives the lie to the official line maintained over several years that the leak had caused serious harm to US national security.
[...] The conclusions are contained in the final report of the information review task force that the DoD set up in the wake of the Manning leaks to look into their impact in the hope of mitigating any damage. The report was obtained by BuzzFeed's investigative reporter Jason Leopold under freedom of information laws.
What killed the computer hacker who turned in Chelsea Manning still a mystery
Forensic pathologists who performed Adrian Lamo's autopsy were unable to determine how the 37-year-old died in March in Wichita. His autopsy report, released Wednesday afternoon, lists Lamo's cause and manner of death as "undetermined." That means that after a thorough examination of his body, results of toxicology testing and information about Lamo's life and last hours, there is nothing that points to a specific reason he died.
"Despite a complete autopsy and supplemental testing, no definitive cause of death was identified," Scott Kipper, deputy coroner and medical examiner at the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center, wrote in the report.
Previously: Adrian Lamo Dies at Age 37
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:38AM
It was an ordinary house located in a normal suburb. Or, at least, that's the conclusion that one would draw if they were to merely glance at the home and walk away. It was a superficial judgement, in other words. The inside of the house told a different story.
A celebration. The man - whose name was Popperson - must have been witnessing a celebration; that was the only thing that came to mind when he entered the house. Balloons were flying around the room in every direction, vibrant music was playing, and the home's decor was every bit reminiscent of a children's birthday party. And then there was the dancing. Yes, the children were dancing. It was a new dance, one that the man had never bore witness to before. A strange dance.
The children danced and danced to the upbeat music. They wriggled to the left, and they wriggled to the right; they appeared to have no particular direction or style in mind. "Perhaps the lack of direction is what makes this dance appealing," the man thought. As the man was contemplating this strange state of affairs, Peterson, the man's good friend and also the homeowner, appeared and explained the situation. Upon hearing Peterson's explanation, a shocking realization dawned upon the man; he turned to look at the children again to see if he could glean any new information from them with his newfound knowledge. As he scrutinized the children, Popperson's eyes became as wide as circles; he at last understood the true nature of the "dance."
The children were naked and urinating. What's more, the children were squirming and spasming on the floor, their eyes going wild all the while. Seizures. Yes, seizures were Peterson's favorite; the man had only just remembered that. What was truly shocking, however, was that Peterson had devised a method to not only cause these children to have seizures at will, but to cause the seizures to last for long periods of time as well! Furthermore, one only needed to utilize the children in a particular way to cause this to happen! As the man was contemplating the countless ways in which this new knowledge would revolutionize every scientific field and usher the world into a new Golden Age, Peterson was grinning in delight. "This must be what The Tower looks like," Popperson thought in earnest.
Children who underwent Peterson's method would eventually be said to be doing 'The Peterson Dance'.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:13AM
I am glad to hear it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:13AM (2 children)
Thats is all.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:21AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:17AM
Nil mortifi sine lucre more likely
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:27AM (7 children)
Sometimes death is a mercy.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Disagree) by takyon on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:52AM (2 children)
It was good enough for the BBC, so naw.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:35PM
How is this different from "If it's good for Wall Street, it's good for me as well?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @11:46AM
Big black...?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 17 2018, @07:39AM (3 children)
Leave it.
Karma isn't real, but sometimes, the randomness of the universe makes it feel like it is and we should cherish those moments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday March 17 2018, @07:52AM (2 children)
I hope and pray you have that backwards.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:46AM
So: "Is it, like, feel? It makes universe the - of randomness, the - sometimes, but... real isn't Karma.
So...you hope and pray we're, like, stoned? Man?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @12:02PM
Randomness? Is that what I was doing?
(Score: 3, Informative) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 17 2018, @01:54PM (3 children)
As much as the prevailing ethos is to take a dump on a dead man, he did nothing wrong. Ignoring that his leaks saved Muslim agents in the Middle East from being beheaded after the Manning leaks, none of it matters. It's like a Jerry killing a Blighty, or a Blighty killing a Jerry. Who's in the right here? Why, of course the side I'm on! What, you think I'm being biased? Hell, no! Take a look at these rationalizations I've wrapped up in extensive "evidence." Hell, I'm so wound up tight, I'll never stop killing those goddless commies.
Rest in peace, Lamo. You had a difficult life for not being one of the outcasts who were part of the outcast clique, i.e the netsec community has become a festering wound filled with maggots.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:35PM
yeah what did he do again? He didn't hit my radar of fucktwats in IT.
the facebook guy can't suffer an timely demise soon enough. same with that ex uber ceo and a number of IT exectuves that make real decisions that sell out privacy for profit while only have a concern for the little person so that they keep being a product, since they're the ones being convinced into the slaughterhouse because its good for them.
based on the reactions here for this guy, it's like he posted nude pics of users sisters and spread catty rumors about what she did last summer. certainly uncool, but the guy in charge of facebook not only defied the hacker ethos but became a callous sellout entirely that even in death won't result in the end of his empire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:21PM (1 child)
What's "a Blighty"? Blighty is slang for a country, namely Britain.
I'll translate into American for you - you're essentially saying "killing an America" but using colloquial slang. Only Brits call Britain Blightly.
(Score: 2) by cocaine overdose on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:37PM
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:32PM (6 children)
I'm sick of most the comments above - no matter how despicable in life, every human deserves the minimal respect of her/his dead not being transformed into a celebration. It's disgusting.
I may fuck you hard while alive, but I promise I'll not dance on your grave - everyone has the right to push up daisies in peace.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:47PM (3 children)
I'm not going to be dancing on Lamo's grave. I don't think he did anything that bad. But you say, no matter how despicable? Really? So how about those ISIS that raped innocent children and women? How about Hitler and related that systematically sent children and others to gas chambers?? How about the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar?
There are people for whom death is too light an escape and dancing on their grave is the least one can do. Having said that, this Lamo guy doesn't really fit that description so this is kind of a tangent comment to a tangent reply.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:41PM (1 child)
A first approximation [soylentnews.org]
My opinion, in a more detailed granularity:
1. it is the damage caused I decry and hope it never happened or it stopped sooner...
2. ... I can only wish the perpetrator doesn't need to die for that damage to stop occurring...
3. ... if the only way for the damage to stop is by the death of the perpetrator, so be it - the death becomes a mean, an unfortunate one to be more precise. I won't rejoice the death of the perpetrator, I'll only be happy that no new damage occurs.
Being happy of the death makes one a pointless vengeful bastard - and mind you, the biggest sin is not being a "vengeful bastard", is the pointless one.
E.g. to what good is that Hitler died when he did, the catastrophe of the WWII was already over at that time.
The satisfaction expressed by some of the comments above for the death of Adrian Lamo is a totally perverse one:
- his death doesn't right his past wrong
- he made a big mistake once fer God sake. As big that mistake was, he was "neutralized" already by his "acquired fame" - he didn't "need" to die to stop further mistakes of the same nature, no further damage could occur because nobody else would confide in him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @08:48PM
He was pulling this shit as soon as he was 'out on parole.' At 2600 meetings and the like, trying to dig up dirt on people he could use as an informant. The Bradley Manning limeline just proved that all the hackers who'd nudged and sshhed and said not to talk around him were right.
This is also why the meatspace hacker meetings have been slowly dying out. Everybody could be a narc and with every person having a spy in their pocket, even if the other guy isn't intentionally spying on you the corps or the government might be.
Gone are the days where get togethers in seedy food courts or subway stations are still safe ways to congregate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 19 2018, @12:14PM
Good thing the Buddhists put an end to the muslums trying to kill them in their own country. Islam for you. Move into another country then try to take over. If the locals resist cry racism until they are forced to stop. Then continue murdering and raping the locals.
Muslims tried to start ethnic cleansing in Burma. They failed. Now they are paying the price for waging war. Expect to see this happen again again as they move into other peoples territory.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:06PM (1 child)
I'm not glad he's dead - I'm glad he's gone.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:44PM
He was gone well before he died - rejoicing his death would be pointless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday March 17 2018, @06:08PM
He was a real lamo.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @09:40PM
And often to those who don't.
How does that bit go?
"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality."
--Emily Dickinson
(Score: 1) by Deeo Kain on Sunday March 18 2018, @10:29PM
And so be done with.