[mkempe]

The lasting message will be that if, as a private person, you help people reveal State Secrets of the most powerful countries on Earth --especially including evidence of war crimes, illegal spying, and assorted abuses of power-- you will be hounded and end up a forced recluse, tortured prisoner, and dead. The widening use of drones is likely to provide evil politicians with the shortcut they generally desire.

Could Assange have organized Wikileaks and gotten such impact as he did while remaining safely anonymous? he must have known he was going to make countless enemies in seats of extraordinary power.

[added] My own lesson from this thread is that Assange is amazingly polarizing in this forum, and there is more bile here than I have ever witnessed in HN (almost half of the comments are greyed out at the moment). Much of it seems driven by political inclination rather than reasoned discussion, driven by the substrate of the government abuses of power he set out to disrupt.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if, as a private person, you help people reveal State Secrets of the most powerful countries on Earth

Plenty of people are leaking all manner of things to the press every day. If you decide to accept leaks, make lots of money off it, align yourself with Russia and then fail to do any diligence on your sources or redaction of your products, you’re doing more than just leaking.