WikiLeaks: the man and the idea
The sight of Julian Assange  giving a stream of television interviews from the grounds of an  18th-century country house on the Norfolk-Suffolk borders was, at the  very least, a confusion of the cinematic genre the plot has hitherto  taken. It was as if Julian Fellowes had been drafted in to finish a  script begun by Stieg Larsson. The James Bond villain had stumbled into  an Edwardian stately home soap opera. A quick interview with Kay Burley  before Carson announces dinner.It is nearly three weeks since the  Guardian and a handful of other news organisations began publishing  stories and selected US state department cables based on the 250,000  documents passed to WikiLeaks.  In that time the world has changed in a number of interesting ways.  Millions of people around the world have glimpsed truths about their  rulers and governments that had previously been hidden, or merely  suspected.Hackers' revengeThe cables have  revealed wrongdoing, war crimes, corruption, hypocrisy, greed,  espionage, double-dealing and the cynical exercise of power on a  wondrous scale. We feel some sympathy with the poster on a Guardian  comment thread this week who complained of Wiki-fatigue. The revelations  have flowed at such a rate that it may be months, or even years, before  the full impact of what has been disclosed can be fully absorbed. It is  all too easy to feel defeated by the sheer scale of the blurred torrent  of information unleashed on the world.During these three weeks  the man who kicked this particular hornet's nest, Julian Assange, has  been arrested, jailed and freed. Hackers have taken revenge on huge  corporations accused of aiding those who would dearly like to choke off  the organisation he founded and runs. The US government has announced a  thoroughgoing review of the principles on which it shares the  intelligence it collects. The porous nature of the digital world has  been driven home to those in charge of international businesses, banks,  armies, governments – and even news and gossip websites. The  implications for large state databases are as yet unknown. And now  Assange is promising to speed up the release of the documents and to  scatter them more broadly around the world.Though the global  implications of what has happened are far reaching, there is an  inevitable sense in which the story is, indeed, being reduced to a  biopic – the life and times of Julian Assange. In some ways this is a  fair representation of events, but it is also limiting, and highly  diversionary. There is no question that Assange has a missionary zeal,  technical skill and high intelligence, without which the whole WikiLeaks  project would never have gained its present prominence and/or  notoriety.Sex allegationsIn last Sunday's Observer Henry Porter compared him  to the 18th-century libertine, John Wilkes. Wilkes is remembered now as  the fearless publisher, editor and politician who fought crucial  skirmishes in the journey towards a free press in Britain. He risked  exile, imprisonment and death for the right to publish – including the  proceedings of parliament. But in his own times he was also regarded as a  rake. One biographer has noted  how "the reports of his sexual liaisons – both factual and fictitious –  leaked from the private realm to fuel the hectic debate over his  qualities as a public man".The parallels with Assange are hard to  ignore. He found himself in Wandsworth prison, not for breaches of the  Espionage Act, but because he is wanted for questioning in Sweden over  sex offences relating to two women he met earlier this year. To many  (though doubtless not to the women) this is a side show to the main  event. To others – including Assange and his legal team (who have  disparagingly referred to the events as a "honeytrap") – this is a dark  conspiracy to frame him, in much the same way that Al Capone was put out  of circulation for tax offences.Unnoticed toilIt  is impossible to make judgments about what happened in private  circumstances: that will be for the Swedish courts eventually to decide.  But it is wrong that the notion that the allegations are simply a  conspiracy or smear should go unexamined. Having been given access to  the relevant Swedish police papers – including the womens' claims and  Assange's rebuttal – we have felt it right to present a brief summary of  the nature of the complaints, together with Assange's response. It is  unusual for a sex offence case to be presented outside of the judicial  process in such a manner, but then it is unheard of for a defendant, his  legal team and supporters to so vehemently and publicly attack women at  the heart of a rape case.As with Wilkes, none of this should  have any bearing on the wider question of Assange's role in bringing the  cables into the open. For some years Assange toiled away, largely  unnoticed, leaking documents which exposed corruption and wrongdoing by  governments and powerful organisations.It is wholly  understandable that the US government should feel both embarrassed and  furious at the scale and nature of the material he has been filtering  out over the past three weeks. So far the administration has acted with  some restraint rather than lash out in some form of retributive fashion.  Assange's legal team believe that this may soon change and that he may  soon face charges of an unspecified nature to do with obtaining and  publishing the cables. Nor should it be forgotten that Bradley Manning, a  23-year-old private accused of being the original source of the leak,  is currently in solitary confinement awaiting a court martial and the  prospect of spending the next five decades behind bars.Painstaking taskWe  and four other news organisations have worked with WikiLeaks over many  months in order carefully and responsibly to publish a small number of  cables. The first amendment of the American constitution is a formidable  bulwark of free speech, rightly admired around the world. As Max  Frankel, a former executive editor of the New York Times, recently wrote  in these pages, the supreme court defended the publication of the  Pentagon Papers in 1971, even though the lead judge, Justice Potter  Stewart, was sure it was not in the public interest. It would be  dismaying if there was now an attempt to prosecute Assange for his role  in publishing the documents. He is clearly in some senses a publisher  and journalist as well as a source. In that respect he deserves  protection, not criminal indictment.The broader plan of WikiLeaks  is to move beyond the arrangement with the five newspapers currently  involved, and to partner with other news organisations who can highlight  stories of particular interest to specific regions. We hope that, if  so, it is done with due care to anything that might jeopardise  individuals or sensitive ongoing operations. The process of editing,  contextualising, explanation and redaction is a painstaking one. It is  part of the craft of journalism. Journalism is also about disclosure. It  is at its best when it is the disclosure of matters of high public  interest. Judge Assange on that score, as much as any other.(The Guardian/London)Sobre las acusaciones que penden en Suecia contra Julian Assange, vea el reportaje en The Guardian, basado en documentos de la policía sueca.