[Editor’s Note: It’s now November 10th, some two months after initial publication. I received substantial feedback about my presentation of the evidence here, and I believe a postmortem is warranted. I reached out to VCBrags on October 5th to see if they’d cooperate. I have yet to receive a reply. I expect to publish something this month either way, which I’ll link here at the top. All the other edit marks below are from the first 24 hours or so. The post hasn’t been touched since.]
I wouldn’t have casually confirmed the man’s identity if he hadn’t effectively outed himself first via a parade of hints/winks. I’d only do a true unmasking if/where I perceived a serious net harm in not doing so, which I’d need to feel sure about for some minimum length of time before acting on it.
A short anecdote as to why:
I didn’t know Adrián Lamo particularly well. But we crossed paths online a bit, and I happened to ask him once how he felt about Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence (Adrián had reported Chelsea to the US military for passing on classified docsto Wikileaks, which he was able to do because Chelsea had reached out to him for guidance using their real name).
While I can’t speak for Adrián (who is sadly no longer with us), the linked statements suggest to me that his decision was something he wrestled with deeply both in the moment and the aftermath. He says he found peace with it. I’m not sure he ever did.
That said, the struggle strikes me as important. While pseudo/anonymity is something that should only be stripped where there is a clear net-harm, the obvious trouble is that most scenarios are not all that clear. Adrián ultimately acted on a concern that Chelsea and Wikileaks were going to give insufficient care to who they were outing. But whether we think he got it right or wrong, we should take some comfort knowing that he really did sit with the weight of it.
Though other decisions won’t follow that exact contour or have quite the same stakes, the right answer can be just as unclear. And I hope we opt to feel the weight.
I also hope that we find a better way of stealing oxygen from trolls so that demasking them is never necessary. It’s within our power. We just have to choose it.
A PS
I wouldn’t have casually confirmed the man’s identity if he hadn’t effectively outed himself first via a parade of hints/winks. I’d only do a true unmasking if/where I perceived a serious net harm in not doing so, which I’d need to feel sure about for some minimum length of time before acting on it.
A short anecdote as to why:
I didn’t know Adrián Lamo particularly well. But we crossed paths online a bit, and I happened to ask him once how he felt about Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence (Adrián had reported Chelsea to the US military for passing on classified docsto Wikileaks, which he was able to do because Chelsea had reached out to him for guidance using their real name).
While I can’t speak for Adrián (who is sadly no longer with us), the linked statements suggest to me that his decision was something he wrestled with deeply both in the moment and the aftermath. He says he found peace with it. I’m not sure he ever did.
That said, the struggle strikes me as important. While pseudo/anonymity is something that should only be stripped where there is a clear net-harm, the obvious trouble is that most scenarios are not all that clear. Adrián ultimately acted on a concern that Chelsea and Wikileaks were going to give insufficient care to who they were outing. But whether we think he got it right or wrong, we should take some comfort knowing that he really did sit with the weight of it.
Though other decisions won’t follow that exact contour or have quite the same stakes, the right answer can be just as unclear. And I hope we opt to feel the weight.
I also hope that we find a better way of stealing oxygen from trolls so that demasking them is never necessary. It’s within our power. We just have to choose it.
https://www.quora.com/How-does-Adri%C3%A1n-Lamo-feel-about-Obamas-commutation-of-Chelsea-Mannings-prison-sentence/answer/Adri%C3%A1n-Lamo