In which today’s news storm has got me pretty bothered.

Why is no news source mentioning the most salient fact about WikiLeaks, which is that all the information given to WikiLeaks came from individuals who believed that the information needed to be made public?

None of the information was stolen. WikiLeaks has committed no crime, and neither has Assange.

The idea that government must keep secrets is a wrong one, but it’s so pervasive that questioning it isn’t even part of the current dialog. Military secrets, well, it seems obvious that they need to be protected, but how can any thinking person sanction hiding data on climate change?

“Seems” is the operative word in the previous sentence, by the way. It seems that such information should be classified… but as one ponders the idea, one realizes that allowing the military the right to secrets presupposes a military that is both honest and just.

Ours is neither, and it remains that way because of secret-keeping. Our troops have murdered (yes, murdered: these are not collateral kills, these are non-combatants) over fifteen thousand people to date. Over 100 civilian deaths per day, at one point. Deliberately. How is that acceptable to anyone?

Well, it’s not. But it’s most easily accepted by those who don’t know about it.

Our military does not have control over itself. It is doing wrong things, evil things. We The People need to know this, and the individuals who leaked these documents believed that people knowing could cause change so much that they risked their lives to get the news out. Crimes committed in secrecy should not go undetected; that’s what these anonymous people are telling us. It’s why they leaked the information to WikiLeaks in the first place: because they wanted the world to know what’s going on behind the government’s closed doors.

Assange is not accused of rape or even harassment, by the way. He had sex with a willing, consenting woman… without a condom. (No, I’m not kidding. It’s a weird law over there called ‘surprise sex.’ The charges were previously dropped but have now been mysteriously resurrected.) How can anyone with the ability to think not suspect that these charges are bullshit, and that Assange is about to be disappeared by a governmental power grown fearfully powerful and frighteningly amoral?

Amazon defended a child molester’s right to sell a book on ways to molest children, but dumped WikiLeaks from the cloud. Paypal has been used by criminals to transfer money for years, and is statistically likely to be making money off of some illegal transaction or other right this very moment, but they dropped WikiLeaks like it was hot. Both Mastercard Europe and Visa Europe have dropped WikiLeaks. I am ashamed and embarrassed by these companies’ decisions to behave this way, even if they’re being leaned on. (Especially if they’re being leaned on.) (If they’re being leaned on, they should tell the press.)

Oh, and not to put too fine a point on all this, but it would probably be a good idea to remember that publishing information is not a crime in the US, no matter what our petty politicians say:

The Espionage Act makes it a crime to interfere with military recruitment or to convey information dealing with national defense. Since its passage in 1917 (Red Scare, anyone?), the law has been challenged a number of times in the courts, most notably with regards to the Pentagon Papers when the Supreme Court ruled that The New York Times was within its rights to publish the leaked information. “Conveying” government secrets is a crime; “publishing” them is not. It is protected by the First Amendment, and for the government to intervene to prevent that from happening is unconstitutional.

– The Weakest Link: What Wikileaks Has Taught Us About the Open Internet

The world is losing its mind. WikiLeaks isn’t doing atrocious things, it’s revealing atrocities that have already been committed! The reactions we’re seeing are guilt and shame and embarrassment and remorse.

The most succinct quote I’ve run across this morning was this one, on Twitter: “Assange’s arrest lifts the veil of a corrupt system masquerading as a proponent of freedom of speech. Nothing is really what it seems to be.”

WikiLeaks is getting so much traction because we live in a world that has too many secrets, too much corruption, and too many lies.

People and institutions can clearly no longer be expected to police themselves, so it seems we must rely upon transparency and the embarrassment of shame to elicit right behavior.

I support WikiLeaks wholeheartedly, and Assange by extension, but in all honesty I’d prefer to live in a world that didn’t need WikiLeaks in the first place.

• So Why Is WikiLeaks A Good Thing Again? (refresh for new items)