Glenn Greenwald on how effective the government has been at attacking WikiLeaks and Julian Assange -- without actually taking legal action against him:
Just look at what the U.S. Government and its friends are willing to do and capable of doing to someone who challenges or defies them -- all without any charges being filed or a shred of legal authority. They've blocked access to their assets, tried to remove them from the Internet, bullied most everyone out of doing any business with them, froze the funds marked for Assange's legal defense at exactly the time that they prepare a strange international arrest warrant to be executed, repeatedly threatened him with murder, had their Australian vassals openly threaten to revoke his passport, and declared them "Terrorists" even though -- unlike the authorities who are doing all of these things -- neither Assange nor WikiLeaks ever engaged in violence, advocated violence, or caused the slaughter of civilians.
Given that even if the third-party publishing of secret information isn't prosecutable as a crime, the ability to leverage this type of pressure without any real accusation of legal wrongdoing should be pretty frightening to anyone who is in the business of occasionally publishing secret information, a description which would include all the major journalistic institutions in the country. Valid criticism of Assange's methods and their potential consequences aside, it's a little weird that most mainstream media outlets aren't alarmed by the precedent being set here.
