[jedwhite]

Hardly, this story is about the means by which established institutions and government agencies will stretch the law to try to thwart the impact of technological change. This is not about sex. It's about the disintermediation of the traditional media and irreversible transparency of government and the exposure of truth being enabled by distributed technology. Every hacker should care deeply about what is happening to this particular hacker, and the manipulative techniques being used to smash the technologically-driven freedom of speech impact that the organization for which he has become a personification represents.

[sigzero]

Or the charges could be totally right...and he is a douche.

[jedwhite]

He may well be a douche, or a bit creepy or strange, or any of the other accusations smeared on him. But the point is that he isn't being pursued because he's a douche. He's being pursued because of his involvement in wikileaks and the technological disruption it represents. There is a deep nexus between the changes being enabled by technology and issues of personal liberty. That's why hackers on here care about technology and transparency - whether it's the transparency of your body through a backscatter imaging device, or the transparency of governments through wikileaks. Hackers are at the vanguard of the changes in technology and freedom. And they care about the liberty of their fellow citizens and democratic institutions. Technology holds both the greatest threat to and the greatest promise for liberty and democracy. How we handle it will determine if it's Big Brother keeping an eye on the people, or the people keeping an eye on Big Brother.

[jedwhite]

PS all of this is not to say there aren't plenty of legitimate criticisms of what wikileaks is doing. Clearly there is some stuff on there that does need discretion if it's genuinely endangering lives and there are parts that should be redacted for the public interest. But the coverage from The New York Times and other traditional media as well as across the web shows there is genuine public interest and public good served in exposure of where there is wrong doing. There is clearly scope for sensible discourse about it. But I don't believe in government assassination hit-lists or smear campaigns and trumped up sex crime charges as a replacement for honest discourse over matters of genuine and valid fourth estate purview.