Hacker Ethics & WikiLeaks Wankers

A hacker is by definition someone comfortable with rule-breaking, so when Adrian Lamo learned of Bradley Manning’s tale of giving 260,000 sensitive cables to WikiLeaks he had a dilemma.

In May, 22 year-old US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning contacted Lamo over IM, apparently out of the blue. Manning was looking for someone to confide in. According to Lamo, Manning went on to tell him that he leaked the Apache video, and that he’d also leaked 260,000 diplomatic cables. Lamo decided to turn him in, and then told the story to Kevin Poulsen of Wired. Wired reported on Manning’s arrest and Lamo’s involvement.

Lamo wasn’t a hacker any more, but he was still sympathetic to the cause and it was hardly an easy decision to rat out the kid. In the end he weighed the options and made a tough call.

He told the audience that he, like Manning and WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, had acted out of conscience. Lamo believed the cables were dangerous. “Holy fracken crap, there’s 260,000 documents,” he said, “Do you think you could look through those and make sure they wouldn’t cause anybody’s life to be lost?”

He also said that if manning had just leaked the video of the Apache attack he wouldn’t have turned him in. I disagree with that, especially since the video was used to make false claims and tarnish the military for acts that were actually completely justified. While Manning and Assange may have believed they were acting out of conscience, they were sorely mistaken and if those diplomatic cables do come out, I hope Assange pays a heavy price. But I do salute Lamo for not holding to some solidarity of the hackerverse mentality when he rightly saw that lives could be put at risk by Manning’s actions. His former comrades have turned on him for his actions, but he is holding his head high and defended himself strongly at a recent hack fest.

Manning will spend some quality time making big rocks into little ones and deservedly so. Assange is another story and I have no clue whether there is any way to hold him accountable for his sorry actions. He represents the mentality that believes any government secrets ought to be exposed. Personally I think he would be a perfect candidate for a little extraordinary rendition, but hey I’m just a knuckle-dragging, pipe-hitting Neanderthal.