Comment by 0xbadcafebee
1 day ago
This reminds me that you have to be a little crazy to resist some of the most powerful forces in our world. You basically have to say, I'm willing to sacrifice my life, be willing to be thrown in jail, be bankrupted, etc, just to keep people informed. There's no personal benefit here. And nobody's going to stop him on the street and thank him for keeping the powerful honest. In today's world, we definitely need more crazies for good. (And we need more organizations formed to help protect them!)
Before Assange it was pretty out there to expect to be arrested for publishing secret documents in the US (conditional on you not being the one to leak them in the first place). The Pentagon Papers and The Progressive cases appeared to provide clear precedent in favor of freedom of the press.