View Full Version : U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe
Remember the helicopter assault video
Not sure where the national security vs government abuse / lies line is drawn.
...
Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online. In the course of their chats, Manning took credit for leaking a headline-making video (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/04/whistleblower-report-leaked-video-shows-us-coverup/) of a helicopter attack that Wikileaks posted online in April. The video showed a deadly 2007 U.S. helicopter air strike in Baghdad that claimed the lives of several innocent civilians.
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 (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/wikileaks-army/), 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.”
Complete story at link
pack3tg0st
06-07-2010, 01:36 PM
Damn... so its getting more difficult to cover up the bullshit... government gets mad.
OMG ITS A THREAT!
Maybe if they didn't do the fucked up shit... they wouldn't need to worry about video footage leaking out?
maybe?
Anyway, I was just reading information on Wikileaks server configurations and failsafe measures... The wikileaks guy knows what the fuck he's doing... and he's doing it well.
Outed by a 'hacker'. Damned hackers, playing both sides. :)
pack3tg0st
06-07-2010, 01:47 PM
Outed by a 'hacker'. Damned hackers, playing both sides. :)
That doesn't make sense...
Wikileaks has a 3 server setup built surrounding TOR...
How could they have found out where it came from?
The leaker talked with the hacker. The hacker turned over logs to the FBI or such. It appears to have been quite open in who the players were.
Hazelnut
06-07-2010, 01:53 PM
Maybe if they didn't do the fucked up shit... they wouldn't need to worry about video footage leaking out?
maybe?
Without a doubt.
anarch
06-07-2010, 02:02 PM
The government lies to save face and says they got the person responsible when in truth that bullshit never happened. If their was truth to this, I think Wiki would of beat them to it.
anarch
06-07-2010, 02:07 PM
Ok I read the story now... It smells on many levels. I stick by my original take. The US army wants to save face so they invented a fall guy.
The agents did tell Lamo that he may be asked to testify against Manning. The Bureau was particularly interested in information that Manning gave Lamo about an apparently-sensitive military cybersecurity matter, Lamo said.
That seemed to be the least interesting information to Manning, however. What seemed to excite him most in his chats was his supposed leaking of the embassy cables. He anticipated returning to the states after his early discharge, and watching from the sidelines as his action bared the secret history of U.S. diplomacy around the world.
Guess we will still be in the dark.
Cogburn
06-07-2010, 02:45 PM
The leaker talked with the hacker. The hacker turned over logs to the FBI or such.
I guess the fact that the guy couldn't keep his mouth shut isn't surprising given he was leaking secret intel.
Stupid is as stupid does, I suppose.
The man should have got it all out before talking. He will pay the price for whatever he did get out anyway.
I suspect he thought he could trust the guy he was talking to about the material to not turn him in.
MrPenny
06-07-2010, 08:16 PM
Kind of on topic....a very recent article in The New Yorker about Wikileaks....pretty cool story..
WikiLeaks is not quite an organization; it is better described as a media insurgency. It has no paid staff, no copiers, no desks, no office. Assange does not even have a home. He travels from country to country, staying with supporters, or friends of friends—as he once put it to me, “I’m living in airports these days.” He is the operation’s prime mover, and it is fair to say that WikiLeaks exists wherever he does. At the same time, hundreds of volunteers from around the world help maintain the Web site’s complicated infrastructure; many participate in small ways, and between three and five people dedicate themselves to it full time. Key members are known only by initials—M, for instance—even deep within WikiLeaks, where communications are conducted by encrypted online chat services. The secretiveness stems from the belief that a populist intelligence operation with virtually no resources, designed to publicize information that powerful institutions do not want public, will have serious adversaries.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz0qDClFLev (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian#ixzz0qDClFLev)
You can bet Us tax dollars are being spent to find what can be found about the organization.
anarch
06-08-2010, 05:57 AM
BUMP TREK Seeking the rational on a night of stupidity. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET THEIR BE INTELLECTUAL POSTINGS AGAIN!!!!
bitdrops
06-18-2010, 11:54 AM
Glenn Greenwald connects the dots (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/18/wikileaks/index.html):
The strange and consequential case of Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo and WikiLeaks
[...] From the start, this whole story was quite strange for numerous reasons. In an attempt to obtain greater clarity about what really happened here, I've spent the last week reviewing everything I could related to this case and speaking with several of the key participants (including Lamo, with whom I had a one-hour interview last night that can be heard on the recorder below, and Poulsen, with whom I had a lengthy email exchange, which is published in full here). A clear understand of what really happened is virtually impossible to acquire, largely because almost everything that is known comes from a single, extremely untrustworthy source: Lamo himself. Compounding that is the fact that most of what came from Lamo has been filtered through a single journalist -- Poulsen -- who has a long and strange history with Lamo, who continues to possess but not disclose key evidence, and who has been only marginally transparent about what actually happened here (I say that as someone who admires Poulsen's work as Editor of Wired's Threat Level blog).
Reviewing everything that is known ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Below is my perspective on what happened here. But there is one fact to keep in mind at the outset. In 2008, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a classified report (ironically leaked to and published by WikiLeaks) which -- as the NYT put it -- placed WikiLeaks on "the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States." That Report discussed ways to destroy WikiLeaks' reputation and efficacy, and emphasized creating the impression that leaking to it is unsafe.
In other words, exactly what the U.S. Government wanted to happen in order to destroy WikiLeaks has happened here: news reports that a key WikiLeaks source has been identified and arrested, followed by announcements from anonymous government officials that there is now a worldwide "manhunt" for its Editor-in-Chief. Even though WikiLeaks did absolutely nothing (either in this case or ever) to compromise the identity of its source, isn't it easy to see how these screeching media reports -- WikiLeaks source arrested; worldwide Manhunt for WikiLeaks; major national security threat -- would cause a prospective leaker to WikiLeaks to think twice, at least: exactly as the Pentagon Report sought to achieve? And that Pentagon Report was from 2008, before the Apache Video was released; imagine how intensified is the Pentagon's desire to destroy WikiLeaks now. Combine that with what both the NYT and Newsweek recently realized is the Obama administration's unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and one can't overstate the caution that's merited here before assuming one knows what happens. [...]
Lamo and Poulsen are certainly very easy to threaten with rotting in jail for trumped up charges. I think the 260.000 (2600 hint hint) "cables" were never leaked to WikiLeaks, maybe that guy Manning doesn't even exist. Nice side effect: Further undermine trust by letting your internet shills feign outrage that WikiLeaks is sitting on those messages and breaking their own principles.
Panic mode, i would say. Won't change anything, though. The WikiLeaks inspired "internet press haven" law in Iceland (http://immi.is) has succesfully passed parliament this week, btw... :D
WhispersInTheDark
06-18-2010, 06:20 PM
I think bitdrops should post more, about media... and stuff.
I ran across the Greenwald article today. Sounds like Lamo is really a lame person.