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Comment by VonGuard | Hacker News Reader

Lamo was a twitchy little fuck with lots of enemies. He was a miserable person, always unhappy, plagued with mental illness, and a past spotted with fucked up relationships. The only people I have ever heard speak kindly of him are the press.

I'd known the guy since 1999, and even back then, in the hacker circles, he was making enemies and pissing people off just by being a bad person in general... Seems like a text book suicide candidate, or at least, a self-abuse through substances type. I mean, his parents threw him out in his teens...

Last time I posted this here I got downvoted to hell and back. Feel free to do the same.

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All too true. I love NPR but I feel like this whole piece was looking back with rose-colored glasses. It seemed EVERYONE who even knew who he was back then hated the absolute shit out of him,and not only had he earned the infamy, he reveled in it. I know it's bad form to speak ill of the dead, but he was the Fred Durst of the hacker community.

I watched an interview with him and what you say definitely feels true to me. I mean that guy snitched on the good guys, and Chelsea Manning was a really good friend of his. Who the fuck does that? You can really see that he was plaqued by mental issues....

The article mentions, in the passing, that Llamo probably thought it was a trap by the Feds, who he thought were constantly surveilling him.

Especially at the time, it was really unclear whether Manning was "The good guys."

It's honestly still a controversial opinion. Lots of people died from an Arab Spring that was kicked off by Libyans learning the State Dept's opinion of their government. The resulting revolutions wave left a trail of bodies but didn't make much change.

The State Department keeps its opinions secret for a reason.

> Lots of people died from an Arab Spring that was kicked off by Libyans learning the State Dept's opinion of their government.

This is a truly bizarre claim. You really think the popular uprising in Libya was caused because a different country criticized their government?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libyan_Civil_War_(2011)#Backgr...

Weird claim indeed. Arab spring was triggered by Mohamed Bouazizi setting himself on fire in Tunisia. It’s interesting this is often forgotten now

> Lots of people died from an Arab Spring that was kicked off by L̶i̶b̶y̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶l̶e̶a̶r̶n̶i̶n̶g̶ the State Dept's opinion of their government.

FTFY

> The resulting revolutions wave left a trail of bodies but didn't make much change.

A lot of the lack of change can be attributed to that same State Department. Secrets for a reason indeed.

>Chelsea Manning was a really good friend of his

Do you have a source for that? Look at the chats on wikipedia. The chat starts with an introduction then immidiately mentions access to classified networks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Chats

Reading those chats (and knowing absolutely nothing about Lamo other than what's in the NPR article) I can't really blame him for turning Manning in. A stranger reaches out to you over the internet and offers you free reign on classified military networks? 99.9% of the time that's a honeypot...

I don't know Lamo at all, but it's worth considering that Lamo may have saved Manning's life, for more than one reason; Manning could have betrayed more and worse secrets than she managed to before being arrested in Iraq; regardless of Lamo's intervention, and even if she hadn't funneled any more documents to Assange, she likely would have been caught anyways, and had she been caught later, her commutation might not have happened --- or worse, her trial could have concluded after Obama left office.

Betray someone today, save their life!

Really, this is reaching.

'May, could, if, likely, might, could'

How many weasel words can you cram into one hypothetical?

How about: It is possible that had Lamo not turned in Manning that we have no clue on how things happened past that point because it didn't happen.

None of those are weasel words.

"If Grandma had balls, she'd be Grandpa."

That is transphobic. Your Grandma could identify as your Grandpa.

They weren't "really good friends;" TFA says that Lamo called two friends (who then called the feds) immediately after speaking to Manning for the first time.

>According to the documents, Lamo then placed a second call — this time to a business partner, a man named Chet Uber, and he told him what Manning had said. The business partner immediately left a message on the Army's Criminal Investigative Division tip line. That was on May 23, 2010, just two days after Lamo and Manning began their fateful exchange.

>> I mean that guy snitched on the good guys, and Chelsea Manning was a really good friend of his. Who the fuck does that?

Any idea as to this motivation for the type of behaviour?

It’s kind of disorienting to read that. AFAIK, Chelsea was never friends with Adrian. Bradley, on the other hand, was.

Must we rewrite history?

Actually Manning (regardless of first name) was not really good friends with Adrian.

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