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What exactly is Greenwald's point? I took away three main points: (1) That we've heard only one side of the story so far, and that side has come from a man wh

What exactly is Greenwald's point? I took away three main points: (1) That we've heard only one side of the story so far, and that side has come from a man who seems obsessed with getting news coverage. (2) Lamo has said contradictory things to different sources; that suggests that Lamo is lying. (3) Lamo admits to lying to Manning in order to convince him to share this information with him. Specifically, he told Manning that he was a journalist and that their conversation would be confidential because of journalism shield laws. He also told Manning that he was ordained minister and their conversation would be held confidential because it was considered a confession. If you have to lie to people and abuse social trusts in order to get them to confess, then you have no scruples whatsoever. I can't see why we should trust anything that Lamo says at face value. I mean, do we have independent confirmation about the 15,000 cables? Or is that just another of Lamo's (many, many) lies?

tptacek 16y ago
I had a hard time articulating what bothered me about Greenwald's article originally, but thanks to this comment I've put my finger on it. This article is about fake sideline controversies. It's premise is that we care about whether Lamo was serving the country or his own interests, and that we've been poorly served by the media in making that determination. But that's not a controversy at all. In reality nobody cares why Lamo turned the guy in. What we care about is that (a) a career military IA agent fed confidential information to Wikileaks, an organization that --- by design --- nobody knows anything meaningful about, and that (b) he got caught. These aren't even value judgements. They're just the atoms of newsworthiness in the story. People with actual access to real secrets will feed things to random people on the Internet, and it is possible for them to get caught when that happens. Lamo and Poulsen's motivations are a sideshow designed to get us all hyped up about the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, so we can conclude the story with a warm fuzzy "wikileaks good, big governments bad" feeling. Big governments may indeed be bad, but we have to use our brains, our judgement, and our own sense of ethics to make those determinations. Editorial sleight of hand can't do it for us.
- madair 16y ago
  Activism for transparency is not a value judgment? Analysis of information suppression by governments in relation to events and information which affect the lives of billions seems like a value judgment too.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I don't know who you're arguing with, but it isn't me. I'm irritated that an opinion journalist is making an important story harder to understand by framing it as a contest between self-interested journalists and idealistic whistleblowers, when in fact the motivations of Lamo and Poulsen have very little to do with what actually happened. Maybe Lamo sold Manning out for a bit of free publicity. Maybe Lamo sold him out because he was terrified of being an accessory to a hard crime that could land him in federal prison for years. Maybe (and I think it's unlikely) he did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. Who cares? He's some guy on the Internet that Manning crazily confessed a serious crime to. We don't need to reform Adrian Lamo.
    - yread 16y ago
      I find his analysis very interesting and the weird things that happened (especially the fact that Manning as an information analyst, confessed to the leaks on AOL IM!) rather hard to believe. Considering Lamo was sent to a madhouse there could have been other forces at play. I think it is an important story!
      - tptacek 16y ago
        How does it change your understanding of the world to learn that Lamo is not a trustworthy intermediary? Most of the people in the world who you could tell that you were leaking classified secrets would not keep that confidence.
        yread 16y ago
        Well, for a moment I comfortably believed what I read as a true history of how it actually happened. After reading the article I'm again sure that there is no way how can I really know what happened in cases where military or intelligence is involved. And that is very important I think
desigooner 16y ago
Unless the chat logs are open to public (of course, after removing the sensitive or personal information as claimed to exist), there would be no way of telling what's true and what's not. Lamo is indeed a "Look at me" guy and the quotes in that audio interview totally contradict his statements to news sites and agencies about his journalist hat and confidentiality cover and what not .. it was bldy convenient of Lamo to call Poulsen about him being detained involuntarily and then the whole Manning saga a few day later esp. considering the fact that he was in contact with Manning before May 20. And what journalist doesn't bother to open emails from a potential whistleblower/informer.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

tptacek 16y ago

I had a hard time articulating what bothered me about Greenwald's article originally, but thanks to this comment I've put my finger on it. This article is about fake sideline controversies. It's premise is that we care about whether Lamo was serving the country or his own interests, and that we've been poorly served by the media in making that determination. But that's not a controversy at all. In reality nobody cares why Lamo turned the guy in. What we care about is that (a) a career military IA agent fed confidential information to Wikileaks, an organization that --- by design --- nobody knows anything meaningful about, and that (b) he got caught. These aren't even value judgements. They're just the atoms of newsworthiness in the story. People with actual access to real secrets will feed things to random people on the Internet, and it is possible for them to get caught when that happens. Lamo and Poulsen's motivations are a sideshow designed to get us all hyped up about the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, so we can conclude the story with a warm fuzzy "wikileaks good, big governments bad" feeling. Big governments may indeed be bad, but we have to use our brains, our judgement, and our own sense of ethics to make those determinations. Editorial sleight of hand can't do it for us.

madair 16y ago
Activism for transparency is not a value judgment? Analysis of information suppression by governments in relation to events and information which affect the lives of billions seems like a value judgment too.
- tptacek 16y ago
  I don't know who you're arguing with, but it isn't me. I'm irritated that an opinion journalist is making an important story harder to understand by framing it as a contest between self-interested journalists and idealistic whistleblowers, when in fact the motivations of Lamo and Poulsen have very little to do with what actually happened. Maybe Lamo sold Manning out for a bit of free publicity. Maybe Lamo sold him out because he was terrified of being an accessory to a hard crime that could land him in federal prison for years. Maybe (and I think it's unlikely) he did it because he thought it was the right thing to do. Who cares? He's some guy on the Internet that Manning crazily confessed a serious crime to. We don't need to reform Adrian Lamo.
  - yread 16y ago
    I find his analysis very interesting and the weird things that happened (especially the fact that Manning as an information analyst, confessed to the leaks on AOL IM!) rather hard to believe. Considering Lamo was sent to a madhouse there could have been other forces at play. I think it is an important story!
    - tptacek 16y ago
      How does it change your understanding of the world to learn that Lamo is not a trustworthy intermediary? Most of the people in the world who you could tell that you were leaking classified secrets would not keep that confidence.
      - yread 16y ago
        Well, for a moment I comfortably believed what I read as a true history of how it actually happened. After reading the article I'm again sure that there is no way how can I really know what happened in cases where military or intelligence is involved. And that is very important I think

desigooner 16y ago

Unless the chat logs are open to public (of course, after removing the sensitive or personal information as claimed to exist), there would be no way of telling what's true and what's not. Lamo is indeed a "Look at me" guy and the quotes in that audio interview totally contradict his statements to news sites and agencies about his journalist hat and confidentiality cover and what not .. it was bldy convenient of Lamo to call Poulsen about him being detained involuntarily and then the whole Manning saga a few day later esp. considering the fact that he was in contact with Manning before May 20. And what journalist doesn't bother to open emails from a potential whistleblower/informer.

deleted 16y ago

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