[defroost]

Deterring future whistleblowers (as mentioned below) is why the Bradley Manning has essentially become a political prisoner who is being held in solitary confinement. It is why, as the article mentions, the DOJ issued a subpoena to Twitter for the personal info of 600,000 supporters. Fear. Fear is why Rep. Peter King talks about "labeling" WikiLeaks a "foreign terrorist organization".

This article made me angry, but also sad, as I believe if we allow the government (in many cases we already have) to use tools like the Patriot Act as a kind of umbrella document to provide cover to go after normal American citizens - academia, free-speech advocates, journalists, hackers working on Tor - we allow an extremely dangerous precedent to be set that will likely lead to all kinds of future abuses of civil rights of people who simply want things like transparency in government. (I mean the real kind, not the kind you promise to implement when you are running for office).

Anyway, Glen Greenwald gave an excellent talk on WikiLeaks and Why They Matter (55:00 minutes mark of video) He speaks eloquently on this very issue. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/09...