from Hacker News

The Mysterious Death of the Hacker Who Turned in Chelsea Manning

by aquabeagle on 9/19/19, 7:50 PM with 69 comments

• by quaquaqua1 on 9/19/19, 11:00 PM

  I independently investigated Lamo's death. The most likely cause of death is related to kidney failure as per the autopsy posted of the medical examiner's website.

  Whether the cause of the kidney failure was related to his diet or to some external actor is unable to be determined due to the decomposition of the body when they found it.

  RIP

• by cwkoss on 9/19/19, 10:53 PM

  "Assange's extradition hearing is scheduled for February 2020, and if Lamo had still been alive, the prosecution would likely not have needed to compel Manning's testimony;"

  <tin foil hat> It seems Lamo being deceased in a necessary pretext for detaining Manning, and so perhaps the IC community knocked him off to keep her imprisoned.

• by onemoresoop on 9/20/19, 5:37 AM

  Al Jazeera Interview with Lamo: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-omBeZMxc

  To me he looks very sedated or on something for sure

• by CPAhem on 9/20/19, 4:25 AM

  There are quite a few mysteries about Wikileaks Arjen Kamphuis' "disappearance" too:

  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-14/missing-wikileaks-ass...

• by pvaldes on 9/20/19, 10:06 AM

  I'm not a physician and could be wrong, but is not necessarily a voluntary overdose/suicide IMO. Looks like an accumulative problem.

  Valeriana root is a sedating but also has the effect to slow the ratio degradation of substances on liver. The liver is coping with more substances/drugs etc on a given time and the result is like a tetris effect. Drugs do not have enough time to exit the body. I assume that this could lead to overdose even with a schedule of taking supposedly safe doses. Drugs accumulating in liver could eventually lead to hepatic failure and overdose. Liver and Kidneys are related so if the liver is too busy could just send more unprocessed substances to kidneys to be discarded in urine. High doses of drugs arriving to kidneys could make them fail.

  At the same time the victim would be sedated and probably not able to react, wake up and go to an hospital

• by xz0r on 9/20/19, 8:06 AM

  Lamo used to answer questions on Quora on a frequent basis[0]. By reading his answers I got glimpses of bits of how he thinks .

  In one of his answers[1] he posts a disclaimer saying he used to work with federal agencies:

  "The writer is a convicted felon, and has worked closely with federal agencies on national security investigations. Yes, I think it’s weird too."

  Wish he'd stayed around longer.

  RIP

  [0] https://www.quora.com/profile/Adri%C3%A1n-Lamo

  [1]https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-FBI-CIA-and-NSA-co...

• by exabrial on 9/20/19, 4:09 AM

  > Federal prosecutors ended Lamo's crusade after he hacked The New York Times and the paper pressed charges

  Just watched an ad on football tonight about how they're pursuing the truth.

• by 25b183 on 9/20/19, 9:46 AM

  Very disturbing

• by dschuetz on 9/20/19, 7:58 AM

  And Lamo was his name'o.

• by thrower123 on 9/20/19, 12:39 AM

  There are an awful lot of people turning up dead with connections to pending investigations and court cases lately...