
U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe - georgecmu
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/leak/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29
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notkevin
Throwaway account.

I personally wouldn't trust Lamo with any information, from past experience.

Few things you should know about Lamo:

1) He loves attention, he will go to some length to make noise so that people
will talk about it/him.

2) He was responsible for leaking his own movie on bit-torrent.

3) Lamo was responsible for leaking wikileaks donor list and he bragged about
it to me.

I personally don't have high regard for Wikileaks either, as they have their
own biased spin on their leaks.

Bottom line. If you are responsible for seriously damaging leaks on the most
powerful government in the world the last thing you want to do is to talk
about it with someone who has questionable ethics. I also think Bradley
Manning is an idiot.

------
avner
Brad Manning violated the very core values of integrity involved in operating
as an IA. In my opinion he doesn't deserve the 'whisteblower' status some
people are trying to protect him under.

Leaking a single controversial guncam footage because his conscience gave in
is one thing, but continuing to leak documents and material and then boast
about it to someone like Lamo is another. As a former Marine, I have seen and
done things that keep me awake at night, but I will never violate my own
integrity by doing what Manning did and end up endangering more lives.

Lamo ended up turning Manning in for another 15 minutes of fame. Anyone
ethical with real national interest in mind would distance himself from this
mess. Either way the leaked material will end up doing nothing but costing
more lives.

~~~
mcantelon
If you're referring to the video of the Apache assult, how does leaked video
of war crimes cost lives? If you're referring to other material he leaked,
which material are you referring to?

~~~
sp332
FTA: "He said he also leaked three other items to Wikileaks: a separate video
showing the notorious 2009 Garani air strike in Afghanistan that Wikileaks has
previously acknowledged is in its possession; a classified Army document
evaluating Wikileaks as a security threat, which the site posted in March; and
a previously unreported breach consisting of 260,000 classified U.S.
diplomatic cables that Manning described as exposing 'almost criminal
political back dealings.'"

GP probably means the diplomatic cables. Sure they can be abused, but
generally speaking, they are secret for good reasons.

~~~
mcantelon
WL says they haven't received any such documents:

<http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/15612005016>

~~~
sp332
The Pentagon thinks he might: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-
stories/2010-06-10/wi...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-
stories/2010-06-10/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-hunted-by-pentagon-over-
massive-leak/)

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tptacek
From the (better) BBC story[1], Lamo's quoted saying:

 _"I hope that Manning gets the same chance as I did - the same chance to take
his punishment as I did and start a new life as I did."

"I like to think I prevented him from getting into more serious trouble."_

I'm not a fan of Lamo or anything, but this seems dead on.

[1] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10255887.stm>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
How much more serious trouble could Manning get into?

I'm not trying to be argumentative. It's a serious question. He had a very
high security rating, and was dumping highly classified documents -- the work
of tens of thousands of man hours and billions of dollars of intelligence --
on to the web.

What's the next step past that?

EDIT: wrong guy -- changed name to be what I meant and not what I typed

~~~
tptacek
Accidentally publishing a document that creates a serious operational crisis,
thus putting him in military prison for the rest of his life.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Accidentally publishing a document that causes an operational crisis is worse
than purposely doing what he did?

Aside from the "accidentally" part, I don't know know could you prove that a
particular document created an operational problem without knowing everything
other people have to make decisions with and how they made them. I think with
this standard of "worse" it's an extremely difficult thing to know with any
certainty.

With the size of the information he dumped, I don't know how anybody would be
able to walk back which operational problems he caused where. That's how
intelligence works -- lots of little pieces making a case one way or another.
Do we really want to have a trial that cross-references all TSSCI operations
with the information in his leaks?

I understand that if there were operation X in which we knew enough about how
it crashed that we could show it was a result of his action -- that might make
a better legal case. But the amount of damage he's done isn't directly
measurable like that. It's not like knocking over a liquor store. He didn't do
less or more damage because it's more or less easily demonstrable. And I'm
still trying to figure out how doing something accidentally -- without intent
to harm -- is worse than doing something intentionally.

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tptacek
My subtext is that this kid was a moron. It's possible that the worst thing
he's done is fed Assange a propaganda video. If so, be aware that the
Washington Post had published more or less a transcript of that video a year
before Assange took it on a media tour.

The "accident" I'm talking about is handing over documents without fully
comprehending what their operational impact is. I'm not letting the kid off
the hook here.

But you combine a moron, access to information, lax security policies, and
Julian Assange and what you have is a recipe for something far worse than a PR
black eye. And I doubt very highly that Assange was thinking too carefully
about this dumb kid's welfare before publishing the stuff he was getting.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Agreed that it is a catastrophe all the way around.

Unfortunately, morons can kill people. I hope there are serious changes in the
psych tests for these positions. People who are careless playing with
explosives shouldn't be allowed around them -- but that doesn't make them any
less dead when they go off.

~~~
tptacek
I think we are in violent agreement. My only point was that by turning him in,
Lamo (who I am not sticking up for) may very well have saved his life, by
disengaging the moron from an extremely hazardous situation that had him
bridging a circuit between Julian Assange and the Department of Defense.

------
houseabsolute
I think after this Lamo will probably not hear from any more people confessing
crimes. Hard to say what the right course of action would be in this situation
although if I were Lamo I probably would not voluntarily announce my
participation in the investigation.

~~~
rdl
Lamo was kind of backed into a corner. Even aside from the moral issues (I
personally would have turned in Manning; if you volunteer for a role where you
will get classified data, you need to play by those rules!)

1) If SPC Manning was talking recklessly to Lamo, Lamo had to assume he was
also talking to other people, and generally behaving recklessly. Manning was
going to get caught. If Lamo didn't say anything, but Manning later was
caught, it would be likely discovered that he'd confessed to Lamo as well.
This would not be good for Lamo, especially if that information were not yet
public knowledge. An investigator might suspect conspiracy, and might suspect
Lamo had data -- he could then be subject to intelligence activity or law
enforcement activity himself.

2) If he cooperated with authorities in secret, it's likely his involvement
would become known later once the trial happened (or at any time of Manning's
choosing). People who interacted with Lamo between his initial contact with
Manning and the eventual disclosure would be afraid they had been compromised
as well.

I think Lamo was in a difficult situation even if he didn't want to turn the
guy in.

~~~
rrc
On the other hand, Lamo might have argued that his status as a famous hacker
makes him a regular target for the fabricated tales of script kiddies and
weirdos worldwide.

Encountering a boastful liar on the internet isn't a freak occurrence by any
means. Whether or not this is a viable defense is another matter.

~~~
rdl
Even if something is a viable defense against conviction in court, being the
subject of an investigation, or even worse, CI investigation, is way before
that point -- and highly unpleasant I'm sure, especially for someone with
previous criminal convictions and ongoing involvement with "hackerdom".

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sp332
> The video, he said, was an encrypted AES-256 ZIP file.

Does this mean Assange broke the AES-256 encryption on a ZIP file in 6 months?
I mean, I'm sure the password didn't have 256 bits of entropy, but dang that's
scary!

~~~
rdl
I'm sure he just brute-forced the passphrase.

~~~
sp332
He's a cryptographer, and he's on record as saying that the encryption was
moderately hard. I think there's more involved than brute-forcing.

~~~
rdl
Brute-forcing a relatively long passphrase is actually a reasonable
accomplishment, especially in secret, and with a limited budget. I will bet
99% that is what he did, and the 'moderately hard' part was in getting
resources to run a covert distributed break.

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HockeyPlayer
The New Yorker had an interesting article about Wikileaks in the last issue:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian)

Addressing the decryption question, the author writes, "Assange, a
cryptographer of exceptional skill, told me that unlocking the file was
'moderately difficult.'"

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rrc
If you were in Lamo's position, how would you have handled it?

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jrockway
I hope he gets a real trial. Because I would nullify.

~~~
rdl
Thankfully, he's under UCMJ jurisdiction, and will have professional military
officers adjudicating.

i.e., he's fucked.

~~~
jrockway
It's ironic that the Constitution doesn't apply to those who make a living
defending its principles.

~~~
hga
But it does, although there is a specific carve out for bringing charges in
the 5th Amendment:

" _No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases
arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service
in time of War or public danger...._ "

~~~
jrockway
If you continue reading:

 _"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the
crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously
ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the
accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have
compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the
Assistance of Counsel for his defense."_

~~~
hga
Which of the above, as defined by the relevant parties (the Congress (UCMJ)
and the Federal courts) is he not going to benefit from?

Civilian juries are based on English civilian common law juries. I would
strongly suspect military court-martial juries have the same basis, although
Wikipedia notes " _Members of a court-martial are commissioned officers,
unless the accused is a warrant officer or enlisted member and requests that
the membership reflect their position by including warrant or enlisted
members._ "

