This epic blogwar between Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and Wired’s Kevin Poulsen is really funny to watch. Mainly because anyone who’s anyone in the hacker scene knows exactly what those chat logs say. Only Glenn Greenwald and his conspiracy theorist followers would seem to be in the dark here.
There is no conspiracy, there is only gayness.
The hacker scene is incredibly insular and interconnected. There are hundreds of people who know these guys personally. We all know Lamo and Poulsen. We are all aware that Lamo is a twitchy little fuck, not to be trusted. We also know that he is queer. And Manning is trans. This is why they were talking to each other. Vagaries of the TVTG world aside, the two have something in common: our society calls them weirdo’s. They obviously connected because of this.
So, we are here to fill in the blanks for you folks out there that think Poulsen is hiding something. Indeed, he is hiding something; he is hiding gayness. Sadly, in our ass-backwards fucked-up little country, gayness is considered a social faux pas. Poulsen is simply respecting the privacy of two people.
Gayness is really cool. We like gayness. But it’s not exactly something Wired should be reporting on. And by withholding the rest of the logs, they are not reporting on it. Rather professional of them, don’t you think?
Manning’s life has been fucked up already. We don’t need to read his dirty, very personal chat logs.
If Mr. Greenwald wants to do some actual research, he is welcome to stop into any hacker IRC channel and ask about the involved parties. We all know them, we all understand exactly what happened here. Obviously, we’re more informed than Mr. Greenwald and his Twitter groupies.
Here is the moral of this story: don’t talk to Adrian Lamo. Even if you think you are connecting with him on a personal level, he will still find a way to stick an unwanted dick in your ass.
We will now digress into the hilarious details. We really don’t give a shit if you believe us, we know these people and anyone else who knows them will tell you what we’re saying is credible.
Blogwar: A Dramatic Translation
What Greenwald and Poulsen are really saying or can’t/won’t say (but we can):
….and scene!
Sure, we get it, no one but Manning can say what the status of Manning’s gender identity is. Being in the Army followed by being tortured in solitary confinement are nightmarish settings for someone to work through anything, let alone gender identity issues. We don’t know what pronoun Manning prefers, we don’t know what gender, etc. etc. So BoingBoing, Wired and everyone else are continuing to operate under the assumption that Manning is a hetero, cis-male blah-deblah until informed otherwise and are trying to respect Manning’s privacy. As they should. But we also call bullshit. Manning is already outed, the log BoingBoing published was not ambiguous. That conversation was about gender identity. Full stop.
“B-but, but Manning’s gender identity isn’t relevant!”
Well of course, Manning’s gender identity and Lamo’s sexuality aren’t relevant. Unless you’re engaged in a huge blogwar about your obsession with getting access to the rest of the chat log that is entirely about those subjects.
“Why did Manning pick Lamo to confide in? Was he entrapped??”
You don’t become known as the “homeless hacker” because you have an awesome family that accepts you no matter what. That shit happens when you are, batshit crazy, have a religious, conservative family, and are a gay teen. These aren’t secrets, this isn’t juicy gossip, we’re not outing anyone. This is what’s on Lamo’s sleeve. There are plenty of other queer, tortured soul hackers out there with difficult pasts, including some Wikileaks folks who Manning would have been WAY better off confiding in. But they might not have been as visible as Lamo, or they may be better known for the cool shit they are doing, rather than being best known for their shitty adolescence.
Regardless of how Lamo first came to Manning’s attention, it’s not a stretch to conclude that a quick Google search on Lamo would have made him appear to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic person he could reach out to.
"This Lamo-Poulsen relationship is shady!”
First thing you gotta understand is that just about everyone hates Lamo. Seriously. Fuck that dude. Sure some random kid on IRC (or, say, a vulnerable Private First Class) who just knows what they read in Lamo’s Wikipedia article are going to hero worship him, his friends and his drug fueled downward spiral into the depths of mental illness over the last 15 years. But he was always an asshole, even before he completely lost it.
Poulsen knows as well as anyone what Lamo’s deal is. That picture of Lamo, Poulsen and Mitnick hanging out was taken the first time they met Lamo. It was Lamo’s idea, he was meeting two heroes. These people aren’t BFF’s. Poulsen reports on Lamo and it annoys the shit out of everyone because they know Lamo is a charlatan attention whore and writing about him only makes it worse. But Poulsen’s bottom line is clear: he’s a reporter. If he thinks something is newsworthy he’s going to write it. His only loyalty is to the story.
If it wasn’t for Poulsen breaking the story, we would not even know Manning exists; the government could have disappeared him. And of all the reporters in the world, Poulsen was in the best position to filter through Lamo’s bullshit and report the salient facts supported by evidence.
Poulsen, of all people, knows not to trust Lamo. It’s absurd to think he’d compromise his career to cover for him. It fucking sucks that Manning didn’t know that too.
TL; DR
SH0\/\/TZ OUT TO #GOATSE ON IRC.ARA+++ ATH NO CARRIER BEEP BOOP BEEP
There is no conspiracy, there is only gayness.
The hacker scene is incredibly insular and interconnected. There are hundreds of people who know these guys personally. We all know Lamo and Poulsen. We are all aware that Lamo is a twitchy little fuck, not to be trusted. We also know that he is queer. And Manning is trans. This is why they were talking to each other. Vagaries of the TVTG world aside, the two have something in common: our society calls them weirdo’s. They obviously connected because of this.
So, we are here to fill in the blanks for you folks out there that think Poulsen is hiding something. Indeed, he is hiding something; he is hiding gayness. Sadly, in our ass-backwards fucked-up little country, gayness is considered a social faux pas. Poulsen is simply respecting the privacy of two people.
Gayness is really cool. We like gayness. But it’s not exactly something Wired should be reporting on. And by withholding the rest of the logs, they are not reporting on it. Rather professional of them, don’t you think?
Manning’s life has been fucked up already. We don’t need to read his dirty, very personal chat logs.
If Mr. Greenwald wants to do some actual research, he is welcome to stop into any hacker IRC channel and ask about the involved parties. We all know them, we all understand exactly what happened here. Obviously, we’re more informed than Mr. Greenwald and his Twitter groupies.
Here is the moral of this story: don’t talk to Adrian Lamo. Even if you think you are connecting with him on a personal level, he will still find a way to stick an unwanted dick in your ass.
We will now digress into the hilarious details. We really don’t give a shit if you believe us, we know these people and anyone else who knows them will tell you what we’re saying is credible.
Blogwar: A Dramatic Translation
What Greenwald and Poulsen are really saying or can’t/won’t say (but we can):
Imaginary-Glenn Greenwald: Why do you get to have the logs and I don’t? I hate that! Why would Lamo give you the chat logs and not me? What’s up with your relationship with Lamo? This smells bad. Your “personal stuff” excuse sounds like a cop-out. I don’t trust you so I’m going to react like you’re lying.
Imaginary-Kevin Poulsen: Jesus fuck. Listen, everything else in the chat log is a discussion about sexuality and gender identity. Manning was grappling with being transgendered, at war, under DADT. He reached out to Lamo because he’s queer too. That’s what they were talking about.
I-GG: I still want to read the part of the log that sheds light on how the conversation started and how Manning picked Lamo to talk to.
I-KP: Like I just said, that conversation has a lot of gayness in it, but very little public interest value beyond satisfying your curiosity, so I’m going to respect this person’s privacy. If you don’t trust me, nothing I say or do will convince you, so this is futile. I’m not the only one with the logs.
I-GG: But now that Lamo has said a bunch of crazy shit in the press, there’s a public interest in bunking or debunking it!
I-KP: Yeah, well, the people quoting Lamo should do their own diligence. You don’t see us reporting shit we can’t back up. You’re not going to force us to choose between outing Manning or being a party to crazy shit Lamo says. We’re staying the fuck out of this.
….and scene!
Are you a pedantic nerd with a Twitter account?
Feel entitled to some answers?
Read on, my friend, read on!
“Woah, woah, watch it! What’s with all this gayness? Where’s that coming from?”
If you were paying attention back in June 2010, after Wired first published parts of the chat log, someone sent a copy to BoingBoing and they published a less redacted version. But they fucked up and outed Manning as transgendered (http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/20/was-alleged-wikileak.html).Sure, we get it, no one but Manning can say what the status of Manning’s gender identity is. Being in the Army followed by being tortured in solitary confinement are nightmarish settings for someone to work through anything, let alone gender identity issues. We don’t know what pronoun Manning prefers, we don’t know what gender, etc. etc. So BoingBoing, Wired and everyone else are continuing to operate under the assumption that Manning is a hetero, cis-male blah-deblah until informed otherwise and are trying to respect Manning’s privacy. As they should. But we also call bullshit. Manning is already outed, the log BoingBoing published was not ambiguous. That conversation was about gender identity. Full stop.
“B-but, but Manning’s gender identity isn’t relevant!”
Well of course, Manning’s gender identity and Lamo’s sexuality aren’t relevant. Unless you’re engaged in a huge blogwar about your obsession with getting access to the rest of the chat log that is entirely about those subjects.
“Why did Manning pick Lamo to confide in? Was he entrapped??”
You don’t become known as the “homeless hacker” because you have an awesome family that accepts you no matter what. That shit happens when you are, batshit crazy, have a religious, conservative family, and are a gay teen. These aren’t secrets, this isn’t juicy gossip, we’re not outing anyone. This is what’s on Lamo’s sleeve. There are plenty of other queer, tortured soul hackers out there with difficult pasts, including some Wikileaks folks who Manning would have been WAY better off confiding in. But they might not have been as visible as Lamo, or they may be better known for the cool shit they are doing, rather than being best known for their shitty adolescence.
Regardless of how Lamo first came to Manning’s attention, it’s not a stretch to conclude that a quick Google search on Lamo would have made him appear to be a kindred spirit, a sympathetic person he could reach out to.
"This Lamo-Poulsen relationship is shady!”
First thing you gotta understand is that just about everyone hates Lamo. Seriously. Fuck that dude. Sure some random kid on IRC (or, say, a vulnerable Private First Class) who just knows what they read in Lamo’s Wikipedia article are going to hero worship him, his friends and his drug fueled downward spiral into the depths of mental illness over the last 15 years. But he was always an asshole, even before he completely lost it.
Poulsen knows as well as anyone what Lamo’s deal is. That picture of Lamo, Poulsen and Mitnick hanging out was taken the first time they met Lamo. It was Lamo’s idea, he was meeting two heroes. These people aren’t BFF’s. Poulsen reports on Lamo and it annoys the shit out of everyone because they know Lamo is a charlatan attention whore and writing about him only makes it worse. But Poulsen’s bottom line is clear: he’s a reporter. If he thinks something is newsworthy he’s going to write it. His only loyalty is to the story.
If it wasn’t for Poulsen breaking the story, we would not even know Manning exists; the government could have disappeared him. And of all the reporters in the world, Poulsen was in the best position to filter through Lamo’s bullshit and report the salient facts supported by evidence.
Poulsen, of all people, knows not to trust Lamo. It’s absurd to think he’d compromise his career to cover for him. It fucking sucks that Manning didn’t know that too.
TL; DR
SH0\/\/TZ OUT TO #GOATSE ON IRC.ARA+++ ATH NO CARRIER BEEP BOOP BEEP
