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Hacker Adrian Lamo Dies At 37 (zdnet.com) 137

Posted by BeauHD from the rest-in-peace dept.
Adrian Lamo, a well-known hacker known for his involvement in passing information on whistleblower Chelsea Manning and hacking into systems at The New York Times, Microsoft, and Yahoo in the early-2000s, has died at 37. ZDNet reports: His father, Mario, posted a brief tribute to his son in a Facebook group on Friday. "With great sadness and a broken heart I have to let know all of Adrian's friends and acquittances that he is dead. A bright mind and compassionate soul is gone, he was my beloved son," he wrote. The coroner for Sedgwick County, where Lamo lived, confirmed his death, but provided no further details. Circumstances surrounding Lamo's death are not immediately known. A neighbor who found his body said he had been dead for some time.
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Hacker Adrian Lamo Dies At 37 More

Hacker Adrian Lamo Dies At 37

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  • 90% chance of opioid overdose (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    When is this country going to stop passing out opiate pills like candy and threating in to kill heroin dealers while young people die in droves?

    • Every time my wife goes to the doctor, I warn her: "Don't let them give you any zombie pills!"

      They often try.

    • Re:90% chance of opioid overdose (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Friday March 16, 2018 @05:33PM (#56272521) Homepage Journal

      When is this country going to stop passing out opiate pills like candy and threating in to kill heroin dealers while young people die in droves?

      Heroin dealers aren't lacing heroin with fentanyl and carfentanyl - they want repeat customers.

      The fentanyl is made in China, shipped to Mexico, and cut there with heroin made in Afghanistan (Taliban operations supported by the US Army). The CIA imports the heroin, and they get exactly the desired effect - dumbasses like you calling for more power for the government to engage in extrajudicial killings domestically.

      End the drug war, sell clean heroin at Walmart, and divert all the money into treatment centers, and you'll clean up both the crime and the body count. This experiment has been run and it works everywhere it's tried. At this point people who support the drug war are either making money on it, useful idiots, or those who just enjoy seeing people die.

      • Re:90% chance of opioid overdose (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Saturday March 17, 2018 @12:59AM (#56273933)
        We have often disagreed, but Bill has this right. (Except, perhaps, for the CIA importing heroin... that's so 1970s. But they still could be, for similar perverse reasons.)

        Basic economics has shown, and by real-world experience: end the drug war, and you also solve the other problems.

        Drug use does not go up, compared to other countries.

        Addiction rates go way DOWN. Without criminal penalty, more people seek treatment.

        Disease rates go way DOWN. No incentive to share needles (or other means of transmission) and spread disease.

        ALL LOGIC AND EXPERIENCE OVER MANY DECADES says that just like alcohol prohibition, the War On Drugs is not just a failure, but the cause of most of the problems.

        The majority of the non-suicide firearm deaths in the US are "criminal-enterprise-related". That means, almost always, something drug-related.

        Remove the underground profit motive, and you remove most of the related crimes and deaths.

        It's not just logic, we have 100 years of practice saying that is so.

        The status quo benefits BOTH sides: law enforcement, and drug dealers. Both have bigger budgets, and better weapons compared to before.

        And that won't stop. Until we eliminate the need for a black market.

        It's really pretty simple economics.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by arth1 ( 260657 )

          Addiction rates go way DOWN. Without criminal penalty, more people seek treatment.

          More is needed than that. With so many states being right-to-fire states, I suspect that many people do all they can to hide their addiction, so they don't lose their job. Becoming unemployed is likely more of a problem for someone who has an expensive addiction and cannot afford CORBA, cannot afford to pay for rehab, and has no chance of passing a drug screening test to land a new job until the addiction is beaten.
          In other countries, social stigma and shame are bigger problems, but here in the US, the ec

      • The CIA imports the heroin, and they get exactly the desired effect

        While I agree with your opinion that decriminalizing would be better far a variety of reason, I can't condone CT. Do you have any evidence of this ? Because I certainly DO have evidence that drug dealer mix drug together to get a more potent effect (I grew up in a bad city where a few were they discussed it openly - you gotta love the 70ies) , or even a variety of dangerous and potentially fatal chemical to cut the drug and make more money.

        • Why would you expect him to give you evidence, when that isn't even close to what he said?

          I admit to being puzzled by your assertion that he said the CIA mixed anything with anything.

          Maybe you need to read it again?
    • I'm ok with killing opiate dealers as long as we start with big pharma CEOs.

  • whistleblowers have a hard road (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    i think this is something most people don't get and most takes on whistleblowers end up romanticizing - whistleblowers have it very very hard. it's not something one should ever do lightly because likely the full brunt of it is going to fall on your own shoulders. whether you end up doing the world any good or not, you're not going to be the beneficiary of any good yourself.

    lamo whistleblew on a whistleblower but he's part of a community that predictably would not have sided with him or THE MAN which is the

    • lamo whistleblew on a whistleblower

      That's not whistleblowing, it's acting as an informant.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Lamo is not a whistleblower. Charitably speaking, he's a witness or informant. Uncharitably, he's a narc, or rat.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Adrian Lamo was not a "whistleblower." Please don't lump that asshole in with people who have accomplished so much in showing to us what the governments of the world would keep in the shadows. Adrian Lamo was a paid government informant. I can only imagine that it weighed rather heavily on his mind once it became public knowledge and he wasn't the hero that he pretended to be.

  • Love From Putin (Score:4, Funny)

    by Templer421 ( 4988421 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @04:20PM (#56272073)

    Please accept this special Russian Air Freshener.

    • Please accept this special Russian Air Freshener.

      You have on proof that the Russian military nerve gas---made only in Russia and used to poison an enemy of Putin after Putin made a public threat to poison his enemies---was Russian.

      Leave Russia Alone!

      Funnily enough, an AI (Anonymous Ivan) yesterday tried to persuade me that it cold have quite easily been Assad or Saddam Hussein. I think Comrade Putin has been skimping a little too hard on the troll training budget recently.

  • Rest in peace (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @05:17PM (#56272411) Homepage

    And now to burn some karma with Slashdot's most unpopular opinion...

    The world runs on faith. We have faith that people will keep waking up, going to their jobs, and keep society running. We have faith that the people we trust will live up to that trust. We have faith that our observations of the world have been genuine.

    Adrian Lamo extended that faith to the government. He had faith that the people in government offices were true to their oaths, and he had faith that eventually a proper justice would be served. He had faith that talking to the authorities would lead to a righteous outcome.

    I do not know exactly what considerations Mr. Lamo had when he made his choices. I have faith that he was trying to do what was right for the world, and I have faith that were I in his position, having had his experiences and knowing what he knew, I would also understand his decisions.

    Rest in peace, fellow human. From my perspective, I may or may not have agreed with you, but that different perspective is what makes us all important.

    • Hmmm, I'd replace the word 'faith' with 'trust,' then agree with you.

      If he was relying on faith, evidence to the contrary wouldn't bother him. If he was relying on trust, on the other hand, and that trust was betrayed, well, that can, and does, shatter people all the time.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by xski ( 113281 )
        Yeah, not a big fan of the F-word there.

    • Re:Rest in peace (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Friday March 16, 2018 @05:29PM (#56272487) Homepage Journal

      Adrian Lamo extended that faith to the government. He had faith that the people in government offices were true to their oaths, and he had faith that eventually a proper justice would be served. He had faith that talking to the authorities would lead to a righteous outcome.

      Or he was a narc because that was a condition of his lenient sentencing, and he chose to take it.

    • Not quite.

      He felt that Manning was toxic.

      He didn't give a flying shit about anything but protecting himself.

      I agree with his decision. Why should he go down in flames with Manning?

      It's an interesting story, though. Good read.

  • It's all well and good to let readers moderate but a case like this shows how quickly a post about a hacker can devolve into a political debate in which one person makes an assertion, almost completely unrelated to the story itself, or in fact COMPLETELY unrelated to it, which then will get modded up or down, (I suspect though obviously can't prove,) according to the feelings or perception of the person with mod-points, rather than ALL being modded down to -1 for being off-topic.

    If only there were some k

  • ...this obituary would make the cover of Time Magazine: Lamo's face with a bloody red X over it. Fitting for someone who'd finger his own mother for a few pieces of silver.

  • When most celebrities die of an "overdose", what is really meant is the doctor screwed up and prescribed two meds that are known to react badly. It's called an overdose to avoid liability.

    Opioid overdose will sometimes fall into that category and sometimes it's a get-rich-quick scheme involving kickbacks and deliberate fraud knowing the patient will die anyway.

    Suicide is a third possibility. America has bugger all for mental health, on the pretext that Real Men never need help. Oh, you can spend a lot, and

  • Won't be missed (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This piece of shit turned in a whistleblower who was exposing US military's war crimes against children in Iraq (see Collateral Murder). In the video, one can see US soldiers raining fire upon journalists, good Samaritans, and children, and laughing about it as they carry out the atrocities. The whistleblower underwent torture under the Obama administration, according to UN.

  • Lamo by name and by nature (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Rot In Hell Adrian Lamo you piece of shit.

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