In 2007, an American Apache helicopter operating in Iraq killed 12 Iraqi citizens, including two Reuters journalists. The event was kept from the American public for months, the film footage of the attack classified. The question of why such blunders are ruled “classified” troubled Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning so much that he hacked into the army’s computer system and leaked the film footage of the Apache attack to the website Wikileaks.
Shortly thereafter, Mr. Manning struck up an online relationship with Adrian Lamo, a federally indicted hacker who served time in prison for hacking into the Pentagon’s computer system a few years earlier. Mr. Manning confided to Mr. Lamo that he was the person who provided Wikilieaks with the footage of the Apache attack. (Mr. Manning also hacked into and leaked 260,000 diplomatic cables.) Claiming to have found a new sense of ethics, Mr. Lamo turned Mr. Manning over to the federal authorities. The can of worms has not been closed since. Mr. Lamo has proven himself to be a self-promoting ass, claiming his snitching on Mr. Manning was “the right thing to do.”
Mr. Manning risked his life and freedom to inform the American public about the atrocities of a war waged in their name. It appears that Mr, Manning should be viewed as a hero and Mr. Lamo is nothing more than his last name implies, a lame, soulless piece of work who should go down in history as one of the most reviling figures of the internet age.
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