Personal
Lamo was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Mario Lamo-Jiménez and Mary Lamo-Atwood in 1981. He spent his early childhood in Arlington, Virginia, until moving to Bogotá, Colombia around the age of 10. When his family moved back to the United States two years later, they settled in San Francisco, where Lamo lived until he tested out of high school a year early. Popularly called the "homeless hacker" for his transient lifestyle, Lamo spent most of his travels couch-surfing, squatting in abandoned buildings and traveling to Internet cafes, libraries and universities to investigate networks, and sometimes exploiting security holes. Despite performing authorized and unauthorized vulnerability assessments for several large, high-profile entities, Lamo refused to accept payment for his services.
In the mid-1990s, Lamo became a volunteer for the gay and lesbian media firm PlanetOut.com. In 1998, Lamo was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
During this period, in 2001, he overdosed on prescription amphetamines.
In a 2004 interview with Wired, an ex-girlfriend of Lamo's described him as "very controlling," stating, "He carried a stun gun, which he used on me." According to the same article, a court issued a restraining order against Lamo. Lamo disputed the accuracy of the article and wrote, "I have never been subject to a restraining order in my life".
Lamo claimed in a Wired article that in May 2010, after reporting his backpack stolen, an investigating officer noted unusual behavior and detained him. He was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome after having been placed on a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold, which was extended to a total of nine days. The police report contradicts Lamo's version of events and states that Lamo was hospitalised as a result of his father calling Sacramento County Sheriff's department three times with concerns that he was over-medicating on his prescription drugs. The Wired article received a subsequent clarification.
As of March 2011, he is in hiding, stating that his "life was under threat" after turning in Bradley Manning.
Read more about this topic: Adrian Lamo
Famous quotes containing the word personal:
“The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.... There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“The personal touch between the people and the man to whom they temporarily delegated power of course conduces to a better understanding between them. Moreover, I ought not to omit to mention as a useful result of my journeying that I am to visit a great many expositions and fairs, and that the curiosity to see the President will certainly increase the box receipts and tend to rescue many commendable enterprises from financial disaster.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)