Adrian Lamo is getting into it again with the feds,
On Tuesday, federal probation officer Michael Sipe filed a notice of violation in a Northern California court accusing Lamo of refusing to submit a blood sample, in violation of Sipe’s instructions and a 2-year-old federal law.
“He reported to the probation office as instructed; however, he refused to provide a blood sample for DNA testing, in violation of the general condition of supervision requiring compliance with federal law,” the filing reads.
It was a bullsh!t charge to start with regarding the “hack” of the New York Times. The FBI wants his DNA added into the CODIS database under a two year old law. He is a hacker, not an axe weilding psychopath that kills his victims and wears their skin as a shawl. What exactly did he do? Well,
In 2001, when he was 20, the hacker snuck into an unprotected content-management tool at Yahoo’s news site to tinker with a Reuters story about Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian computer programmer who was facing U.S. charges for cracking an Adobe Systems eBook copy-protection scheme. Lamo modified the story to report, incorrectly, that Sklyarov was facing the death penalty, and added a made-up quote by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft: “They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law.”
He could face a revocation of his probation and spend 5 years in lockup. I’m amazed that this continues. Cut the man some slack.
[tags]Hacker, Adrian Lamo, CODIS, Civil Liberties[/tags]