◆ SpookStack

* SE Weekly | ShWeek1y.COm | INEWS > reatune fi rrany wy saauanye sess mreen He discovered he could live on about $50 a week, plus or minus the occasional check from his parents or gift card from a sympathetic friend, and got what little income he needed through an odd bit of freelance computer work. He has even been an assistant to a private investigator. His lifestyle, needless to say, made it difficult to apply for, much less hold, a regular job, and he wasn't willing to abandon his wayfaring ways. He had begun hacking in high school -- where he got thrown out of the only computer class he ever took (to this day, his computer skills remain entirely self-taught) -- and decided to devote himself to exploring both the real and virtual worlds. “I'm just as likely to be wandering around an abandoned buiiding or crawling through a storm drain as Iam to be poking around something ontine," Lamo says. “And I think both of them are equally valid. I think me getting stuck in a storm drain in New Jersey is every bit as important as breaking into the New York Times." His parents, for their part, say they are pleased that Adrian has found an application for his unique talents; they don't discuss with me any concerns they might have about their son landing in prison. "We have always encouraged Adrian to be a critical thinker," they write, "and are proud of his intellect, and that he applies his skills to what he likes most, computer security.” Besides, they probably couldn't convince Lamo to change his line of work if they tried. “This is what I'm here to do," Lamo says, his iong, slender fingers still gliding across his keyboard in the Sacramento coffee shop, now suffused in a tate-afternoon glow that lends a bit more radiance to the hacker's near-translucent skin tone. "I think everything we do has ripples beyond what we see, even if the only thing that sees the rippies is the universe itself. I just have a real strong feeling that this is what T'm born for, and what I'm doing isn't wasted. 1 just feel compelied to explore.” A few minutes fater, a guy with a crew cut and a thick build enters the coffee shop; Lamo stops talking, shuts his laptop, and follows the guy with his eyes. “There is an FBI office in that building over there,” Lamo says, motioning out the window. "It's not in the building directory, but it's there, on the top floor.” With the kind of access Adrian Lamo stumbled across in 2001, almost by accident, any employee at WorldCom could have turned off the internal computer network for Bank of America. He’s eaten now; he feels better. Darkness has fallen outside the Embarcadero Center; it's a few weeks after we met in Sacramento. He's been out of touch again, “regrouping personally," as he puts it, and preparing for the hack he's about to announce. “I need to make sure I have cash on hand, places to go," Lamo says, and his tone hardens. "I want to make sure that, if things go south, they won't be able to say, “Lamo was hopelessly naive, that he was just sitting around in his bedroom at his parents’ house." FBI(19-cv-1495)-179 http://werw.sfweekly.comvissues/2003-04-16/feature html L/index.btml 6/20/2003