Backstabber Report

Adrian Lamo Becomes The Government’s Snitch

The once homeless Adrian Lamo (pictured), the convicted Yahoo and NY Times database hacker who claims to have Aspergers Syndrome (a condition that does not allow empathy toward others), seems to be looking for employment with the government as their new snitch.

After giving up Pfc. Bradley Manning, whom Lamo befriended, claiming to be a “journalist” and promising confidentiality, Lamo has now turned in more information about two MIT students to the feds. Lamo has told the government that these MIT students assisted Manning in transferring documents that exposed the lies of the military in Afghanistan, along with a video of an Apache helicopter murdering Iraqi civilians and two Rueters journalists in 2007.

Lamo claims that his knowledge of the MIT students’ assistance came from phone conversations he had with them.

Lamo said both men attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he refused to identify them because, he said, at least one of them has threatened him. One of these men allegedly told Lamo they gave encryption software to Manning and taught the Army private how to use it.

The Boston Globe interviewed one recent MIT graduate who it said acknowledged Saturday that he met Manning in January and exchanged as many as 10 e-mails with him about security issues. But the individual “adamantly” denied any role in the document leak, the Globe reported. The Globe also reported that this MIT graduate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he was interviewed several months ago by Army investigators to find out whether he or “others in the local computer hacker community” helped Manning transfer the information to the website, Wikileaks.com.

While Bradley Manning now resides in a holding facility in Quantico, Va, the government, who does not confirm a manhunt is being conducted for Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, seems to be ratcheting up the pressure to locate him.

A top volunteer with WikiLeaks, Jacob Appelbaum, was detained by US customs officials in New York, following his return to the nation from a trip to the Netherlands. During the three hour detention, officials rummaged through his belongings, photocopied all of his receipts, searched his laptop computer, and seized his cellular telephones.

All invasions of privacy allowable under the Patriot Act.

According to Appelbaum, the officials, along with representatives of the U.S. Army, demanded to know his opinion of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also pressed him to reveal the whereabouts of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. He says FBI officials again accosted him at his final destination, Las Vegas, where he was to attend the DefCon conference. Officials told Applebaum he was "randomly selected" for the in-depth screening.

It is still unknown if Lamo has received payment of any kind as an informant for the U.S. Government, or if he has now paid off the $68,000 owed to The NY Times for his hacking conviction.