[5] Lamo first gained media attention for breaking into several high-profile computer networks, including those of The New York Times, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, culminating in his 2003 arrest.

[6] Lamo was best known for reporting U.S. soldier Chelsea Manning to Army criminal investigators in 2010[7] for leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks.

[20][21] Lamo was a grey hat hacker who viewed the rise of the World Wide Web with a mixture of excitement and alarm.

[13] Lamo hoped to be hired by a corporation to attempt to break into systems and test their security, a practice that came to be known as red teaming.

[23][24] In July 2004, Lamo was sentenced to two years' probation with six months to be served in home detention and ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution.

[28] When challenged for a response to allegations that he was glamorizing crime for the sake of publicity, he responded: "Anything I could say about my person or my actions would only cheapen what they have to say for themselves".

When approached for comment during his criminal case, Lamo frustrated reporters with non-sequiturs, such as "Faith manages"[29] and "It's a beautiful day.

[32] On May 9, 2006, 18 months into a two-year probation sentence, Lamo refused to give the United States government a blood sample it had demanded to record his DNA in its CODIS system.

"[37] WikiLeaks responded by denouncing Lamo and the author of the article as "notorious felons, informers & manipulators", and said: "journalists should take care.

The head of Project Vigilant, Chet Uber, claimed, "I'm the one who called the U.S. government... All the people who say that Adrian is a narc, he did a patriotic thing.

"[41] The Taliban insurgency later announced its intention to execute Afghan nationals named in the leaks as having cooperated with the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan.

[47][vague] Lamo characterized his decision to work with the government as morally ambiguous but objectively necessary, writing that "there were no right choices that day, only less wrong ones.

"[52] This drew a response from Wired: "At his most reasonable, Greenwald impugns our motives, attacks the character of our staff and carefully selects his facts and sources to misrepresent the truth and generate outrage in his readership.

In May 2009, a video purporting to be a trailer for Hackers Wanted was allegedly leaked onto the Internet film site Eye Crave Network.

[62][63] Lamo reconnected with Leo Laporte in 2015 as a result of a Quora article on the "dark web" for an episode of The New Screen Savers.

[13][68] In 1998, he was appointed to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Questioning Youth Task Force by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

[73] For a period of time in March 2011, Lamo was allegedly "in hiding", claiming that his "life was under threat" after turning in Manning.

[75][76][77] Nearly three months later, the Sedgwick County Regional Forensic Science Center reported that "Despite a complete autopsy and supplemental testing, no definitive cause of death was identified.