Adrian Lamo has died
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
Adrian had a passing romance with a friend of mine, and thus ended up traveling through the city I grew up in. This was long before Chelsea Manning, etc.
I was a super shy, rather awkward teenage girl. I suppose the teenage part has changed.. but I digress. I loved the idea of mischief, but at the same time, I was a habitual rule-follower. I get nervous walking through the retail store detectors placed at entrances.. even though I've never stolen anything in my life. I remember listening to social engineering phone pranks -- the sort where people would talk their way into being put on the store-wide intercom at Walmart. At the time, I think I really wanted to be so confident that I could do such a thing, versus the reality, which was mild anxiety over something so simple as placing a legit pizza order over the phone.
I knew who Adrian was in a peripheral sense. I was a community leader and eventual employee on AOL in years prior, and I had an interest in how to break things as an inverse of being curious how they're built.
I had a car, while my friend did not, and Adrian had traveled via transit, so I spent the day with them hopping around town. At one point, we were downtown grabbing food in one of the larger complexes -- Adrian breaks off for a second and asks a retail store employee a bunch of questions about working there, saying he was just hired at the cafe. We then ended up going into what was clearly an employee-only area -- GUYS WE AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE HERE WHAT IF WE GET IN TROUBLE OH GOD -- we duck into a fire escape, hike up to the upper level where he picks the lock to the door with roof access, and there we are, highest point in the city. After a few minutes of me suggesting that MAYBE we go back down since this was cool BUT REALLY WE SHOULD GO, Adrian told me I'd miss the sunset if I kept worrying.
It was dumb. I'm sure I could've been arrested. But watching the sunset with the two of them from the top of that building remains one of my favorite memories. It was the first time I'd taken a step out of my shell, I suppose. Adrian was a troubled guy, and I don't forgive what he did to Manning, but I appreciated him for that moment in time.
I think hackers reveal the unexamined difference between how people use something and what it does. E.g., people used copyright to give exclusivity to a particular publisher. But copyright itself doesn't "do" exclusivity. It instead gives the author the power to license the work as they see fit. So even if the license is a legal restatement of the golden rule, it is still backed by the full force of U.S. copyright law.
(tbf, I wouldn't believe a random story on the internet from an account created that day either.. ah well.)
This is probably how myths, if not entire religions, get started. A grain of truth wrapped in a larger web of deceit, spun by an insignificant spider who doesn't even know, herself, how far it will ultimately reach.
(That aside, the site guidelines encourage its users to presume good faith, so I'm inclined to do so unless there's some actual evidence that whichwalrus's story isn't on the level.)
I've turned off flags on this story because if we don't, the story will be reposted until we do. In return, here's a request: if you comment here, try to bring your heart with you a bit more than you usually would.
If we don't do that, a sort of tragedy of the commons kicks in where we each add a piece that's defensible in itself, but the picture of us that the pieces add up to is ugly.
Adrian and I became friends when we were both about 12. We met at 2600 meetings in the embarcadero in SF. We soon were buddies, going “trashing” downtown finding all kinds of crazy things corporate SF left out for trash: working DAT backup drives, 17” view sonics (prized at the time), blueprints for a bank (!), entire trash bags full of credit card receipts with nothing redacted, etc.
He was always a mysterious one, and beat to his own drum. I admired his spirit, and our paths crossed many times including when we both volunteered at the same queer youth center in SF.
Years later he stayed with me in grad school in Cambridge looking not the healthiest. I tried to provide food and shelter, not able to figure out why a guy so talented refused to do anything conventional that would make him good money. But he didn’t care about such things.
He had his own sense of right and wrong, and was principaled within his own philosophy — but I never fully understood what philosophy that was. When I recently was chatting with him, I asked why did was doing something currently to which he said “why do I ever do anything?”
I’ll deeply miss Adrian.. he was a kind and unique spirit. Some may disagree with me on that only because they only know him through Manning, but that was a small sliver of his life (and one I happen to agree with him on, with additional perspectives I can’t share publicly).
I met Adrian in about 98 in SF and shared many of the same kinds of adventures with him. He shared a lot of his physical and electronic intrusions with me and he never did any harm or anything malicious. It was all simple exploration in the best hacker ethos. He'd usually inform the 'victim' taking nothing for his services except a Coke while he told them his story.
I'm also curious what happened, morbidly. I haven't heard from him at all in a few years. An unfortunate addition to the list of young, talented but troubled hackers I've known who've left us too soon. :(
> Lamo first gained media attention for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, culminating in his 2003 arrest.[7]
> In 2010, Lamo indirectly reported U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to the Army's Criminal Investigation Command,[8] claiming that Manning had leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.
Wikipedia was different in those days. A few hours after it was posted, Larry Sanger himself added a comment to the end saying "Um, can we clean up the above puff job, please?"
Meanwhile thanks for popping up. I've applied my flags :)
Url changed from https://www.facebook.com/groups/majordomo/permalink/10156204....
Edit: We'll try turning off the flags and seeing if the discussion can do better.
I think I understand why you wrote that, but I don't agree. Posts here should be thoughtful and respectful, certainly. But it is not Facebook. I am not an expert about this person who has died, but it appears his story has a public interest dimension. HN is an appropriate place for such discussion. Furthermore, I think you need to remember that this is a global community, containing many people far away from events in the USA. In the event of any death, the vast majority of HN readers are not members of the in-crowd who had some personal connection to that person. This site has a large global readership; it isn't and cannot be a "community" in the local sense that you and dang seem to be portraying it as. (Also, friendly reminder, dang is the moderator but AFAIK you aren't).
I didn't know him, but I've known plenty of others with questionable reputations who've died as a result of mental duress. Before you comment, I'll ask as a bystander for you to think about whether everyone benefits from knowing what you wish to share. Otherwise, you'll just out yourself as an asshole.
Rest in peace, Adrian. Regardless of what you did, beneficial or otherwise, no one deserves the mind-shackles you had to live with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYN6JuQGGX0
Hackers Wanted.
It is now, though.
Since "flagged" isn't a binary state that's the only easy way to do it, but it does mean that a story's rank is sometimes affected by user flags without that being visually displayed yet. Usually it shows up after a while.
I know that most people here will probably remember him mostly for what happened between him and Chelsea Manning (and, quite frankly, I automatically like anyone who makes an enemy of Julian Assange), but I want to remember him for his early work more than anything.
[1] http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/05/03/cracking-magus-fate-zero-...
Lamo screwed Manning big time, but when he did, none of us who knew him were surprised. He was never a happy person, and never friendly to anyone I knew. I think his folks threw him out of the house in his teens.
Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups who knew him long ago. He was just seemingly not comfortable being in society and making friends.
I will say, though, that being the target of social engineering by someone you know is renowned for being good at social engineering is an interesting experience. You almost can't help yourself even though you know better.
It's fine to constructively criticize. But it's inherently impossible to do that with someone who's died because they're dead. And with disorders which risk social impairment, public shaming isn't the solution either; it just drives people who don't understand how to address their challenges further and further into a hole.
I figure your question was intended as both maieutic and rhetorical, but please take into account what I'm sharing with you here.
People are expected in some capacity to grow on hackernews. This comment contributed no growth value to anyone.
Now my complaint: you could have posted this tomorrow and I wouldn't have so much trouble with it, but hijacking the announcement of someone's death to air privileged /and/ gossipy bits of their private life, their sexuality, their homelife, /and/ include allegations of sexual harassment all in one swoop strikes me as utterly distasteful, and the kind of personality I would not wish present at any party I ever attend.
Imagine one of Adrian's family members sitting in a room with every person from this thread, and these comments being directed to them, in person.
Fucksake HN. You're being more classless than usual today.
Go see what happened when Ian Murdock died, if you want to know how crass this site can really be.
> Kind of a tragic figure, but also not really someone you could ever trust or even invite to parties. When anyone dies, it's sad. But with Adrian, he had already basically removed himself from the groups who knew him long ago.
This is awfully similar to the impression of Aaron Swartz I've heard from those who knew him. All of them seem uncomfortable with the praise that was heaped on him after he died, though that's not to say that what happened to him wasn't awful. People are just very flawed, and it's hard to look at or acknowledge those flaws sometimes.
Aaron's story is by far the more tragic to me.
I completely agree, and I absolutely wasn't trying to draw a comparison between their actions.
https://www.quora.com/If-youre-bisexual-and-coming-out-could...
What I do know, and what the world should have thought us in the last couple of years, is that when this isn't the case it is often hiding in plain sight under layers of denial. And that the only way to uncover those things is to be able to speak about people and their actions. So while I do believe in being respectful I am not sure that we have earned the luxury to be uncomfortable when someone has a negative opinion about someone else.
He’d always been comfortable in our friendship.
I find your summary distasteful and not accurate. You should have enough respect for life to not take the opportunity to trash someone on their death announcement.