Bradley Manning’s is the face that launched a (hundred) thousand leaks. The 22 year-old intelligence analyst for the U.S. Army’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division was stationed in Iraq when, allegedly, he downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents and video from SIPRnet, the military’s classified intelligence network. Though Manning has yet to be convicted, instant messenger chat transcripts made public by an acquiantance, hacker Adrian Lamo, suggest he was disenchanted with the military’s mission in Iraq and isolated by its Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy that banned homosexual service members from serving openly. Obtaining the sensitive documents including a trove of 260,000 diplomatic cables – many of recent vintage – was a simple affair for Manning, who summarized the Pentagon’s cyber defenses as “weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counterintelligence, inattentive signal analysis … a perfect storm.”
(Photo via bradleymanning.org)
