Losing His Religion: Adrian Lamo Interview 208
digidave writes "Six months after the sit-down, TechFocus.org has published their interview with renowned hacker Adrian Lamo. Done before his arrest, TechFocus kept the interview secret so as not to influence the outcome of his trial. It remains his only interview since being arrested."
Fresh taste of burnt spin in the morning (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a nice bit of spin. They did it because they're a website, so in the eyes of the legal system, they're not decisively a "real" news organization, so they knew they'd get subpoenaed in a second by either prosecutors and have to turn over everything; it'd be a legal battle that would get drawn out for months given the stakes. The EFF would probably get involved, etc. A good deal of their notes etc would probably be very, very incriminating to Lamo, since hackers, like most stupid criminals, love to brag about their crimes.
So, in other words, they danced on the line of hiding criminal evidence. It would not be a stretch for them to get charged themselves. I'd be absolutely amazed if they didn't at least get subpoenaed within the next few days and the evidence used to file new charges against Lamo.
Re:IANAL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally consider $300k pretty injurious.
Actually since he tends to encourage good things...
Like giving an underage (said he was a "kid") herion addict $5 to help fund his habbit.
I'm not saying this guy is completely bad, or that he hasn't been helpful, but he seems to just do things, good or bad, that he feels like doing at the time. Not a problem until he starts breaking the law.
Re:IANAL, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It Figures the Times would do him in (Score:3, Interesting)
"Although the Times doesn't pay retail for the service, the FBI calculated Lamo's damages using the full Lexis-Nexis rate, which added up to a shocking $300,000. It was clearly a punitive figure. Had Lamo simply bought an unlimited three-month account with Lexis-Nexis rather than piggybacking off the Times, it would have cost him just $1,500."
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/hacker_p
Re:IANAL, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
You use the "IANAL" tag, but you try to sound like you are, or at least you think that you have some kind of understanding of what "law" is all about.
Pretty hillarious.
If you know anything about Jurisprudence, you would know that since he PUBLICLY ADMITTED to the intrusion, and EVIDENCE WAS COLLECTED to substantiate his claim, he IS guilty. Confession of a crime *IS* the equivalent of "Probable Cause" - that's why we have things like the 5th Ammendment to protect one's self from self-incrimination. Confessions of a crime are not inadmissable in a Court of Law, bucko!
Chances are that if Adrian had shut his yap about his "exploits" he'd be a free man; but, like most "hackers", the street-cred and "|337n355" of their activities and boasting of them is how they climb the ladder of their "society".
The claims of Adrian Lamo, stating that he was doing this "out of the goodness of his heart" are pure bunk - he was using Lexis/Nexus to find legal info on him, his family, etc. He just used the "oh, I'll call them and tell them that their network is swiss-cheese and they'll thank me and forget about what I REALLY did on their network" - which is a sure-sign of a sociopath.
Pretty pathetic, actually - such a waste of brainpower & talent.
--ScottKin
I'm confused (Score:3, Interesting)
Neat trick given he was homeless.
Re:Only interview? (Score:3, Interesting)
The NPR interview has an interresting comment.
interviewer: You know it seems to me somebody with your curiosity, your interest and your skill could make for themselves a pretty profitable career as a security expert, obviously.
Adrian: There's things that I've really learned from the process of my crimes and one of them is that the security industry is a dishonest profession. It relies on people's fear; it relies on manufacturing fear by hyping up the vulnerabilities that have no real world applications and forcing people to pay more money to defend against them. It's really not something that I'm interrested in supporting or being a part of. It's not something that I could feel proud of. There's nobody in the security industry that I could point at and say "yea, they're good people. They've done good."
I don't know if I agree with that sentiment, I just think it's interresting that someone in his situation would say that.