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It's not a privacy concern, he's getting death threat from prominent US politicos. The US kidnaps and tortures its prisoners.

He should follow the same rules. It's always easier to "play Jesus" when you are personally safe.

There's no irony or hypocrisy here. If people can't tell the difference between releasing info from an ongoing rape investigation (which is damaging to both the alleged victims AND Assange) and the things Wikileaks releases then they're missing the entire point. Frankly, all this supposed contradiction proves is that people are staggeringly simple-minded.

Let me spell it out. Private citizens are entitled to privacy. Governments and large corporations are NOT private citizens, nor do we treat them as such. Wikileaks does not seek transparency for private individuals nor does it seek to reveal wrongdoing of private citizens. Wikileaks are not the police or the justice system. They are the press. We, as private citizens, have every right to know what our democratically elected leaders are doing and saying in our name. They are beholden to US, not we to them. We have a right to know about government and corporate corruption. We have less right to know what these CEO’s and officials do in their personal lives, although sometimes the two may bleed together and it may be in the public’s interest. But, more to the point and contrary to warrantless wiretapping and the PATRIOT Act, our government has no right to delve into our lives as they currently do. We are their bosses, not the other way around.

I’m surprised that so many Americans are against Wikileaks. In my opinion they should be embracing it. I can guarantee that Thomas Jefferson would be behind Wikileaks 100%. Let’s hear from Jefferson, then:

“The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.”