Accidentally publishing a document that causes an operational crisis is worse than purposely doing what he did?
Aside from the "accidentally" part, I don't know know could you prove that a particular document created an operational problem without knowing everything other people have to make decisions with and how they made them. I think with this standard of "worse" it's an extremely difficult thing to know with any certainty.
With the size of the information he dumped, I don't know how anybody would be able to walk back which operational problems he caused where. That's how intelligence works -- lots of little pieces making a case one way or another. Do we really want to have a trial that cross-references all TSSCI operations with the information in his leaks?
I understand that if there were operation X in which we knew enough about how it crashed that we could show it was a result of his action -- that might make a better legal case. But the amount of damage he's done isn't directly measurable like that. It's not like knocking over a liquor store. He didn't do less or more damage because it's more or less easily demonstrable. And I'm still trying to figure out how doing something accidentally -- without intent to harm -- is worse than doing something intentionally.
My subtext is that this kid was a moron. It's possible that the worst thing he's done is fed Assange a propaganda video. If so, be aware that the Washington Post had published more or less a transcript of that video a year before Assange took it on a media tour.
The "accident" I'm talking about is handing over documents without fully comprehending what their operational impact is. I'm not letting the kid off the hook here.
But you combine a moron, access to information, lax security policies, and Julian Assange and what you have is a recipe for something far worse than a PR black eye. And I doubt very highly that Assange was thinking too carefully about this dumb kid's welfare before publishing the stuff he was getting.
Agreed that it is a catastrophe all the way around.
Unfortunately, morons can kill people. I hope there are serious changes in the psych tests for these positions. People who are careless playing with explosives shouldn't be allowed around them -- but that doesn't make them any less dead when they go off.
I think we are in violent agreement. My only point was that by turning him in, Lamo (who I am not sticking up for) may very well have saved his life, by disengaging the moron from an extremely hazardous situation that had him bridging a circuit between Julian Assange and the Department of Defense.
Aside from the "accidentally" part, I don't know know could you prove that a particular document created an operational problem without knowing everything other people have to make decisions with and how they made them. I think with this standard of "worse" it's an extremely difficult thing to know with any certainty.
With the size of the information he dumped, I don't know how anybody would be able to walk back which operational problems he caused where. That's how intelligence works -- lots of little pieces making a case one way or another. Do we really want to have a trial that cross-references all TSSCI operations with the information in his leaks?
I understand that if there were operation X in which we knew enough about how it crashed that we could show it was a result of his action -- that might make a better legal case. But the amount of damage he's done isn't directly measurable like that. It's not like knocking over a liquor store. He didn't do less or more damage because it's more or less easily demonstrable. And I'm still trying to figure out how doing something accidentally -- without intent to harm -- is worse than doing something intentionally.