Jack Shafer writes that he loves Wikileaks for "restoring distrust in our most important institutions":
The idea of WikiLeaks is scarier than anything the organization has leaked or anything Assange has done because it restores our distrust in the institutions that control our lives. It reminds people that at any given time, a criminal dossier worth exposing is squirreled away in a database someplace in the Pentagon or at Foggy Bottom. Assange's next stop appears to be Wall Street. According to the New York Times' DealBook, WikiLeaks has targeted Bank of America Assange foreshadowed this scoop by telling Computerworld in 2009 of the five gigabytes of data he'd acquired from a B of A executive's hard drive; this month he told Forbes of an "ecosystem of corruption" he hopes to uncover. Today, he reiterated his intention to take on banks in an interview with Time.
Finally--after the war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the economic crisis, a long, punishing recession, and an unending war in Afghanistan, it's nice that someone has finally come along and shaken American's unbending faith in the ability of political, social, and economic elites to solve problems.
