The World of WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks is famously embroiled in a current controversy which aptly demonstrates the inter-connectedness of the world's states. He is an Australian, wanted by Sweden, arrested in Great Britain, and pursued by America for telling the truth about Iraq. The complexities of international extradition law aside, there seems to be no doubt, anymore, that the extraordinary efforts to return him to Sweden to face a dubious prosecution have really been engineered by American officials who want to bring him to ground so that they can indict him for security leaks here. Needless to say, this is an abiuse of international law, but more to our point (geography) this case illustrates the obsolescnce of locality in an internet driven world. Assange's American crimes, if he committed any, never required that he set foot in America. His disclosure of secret documents, and his receipt of them for that matter, happened in another place that has no relevance to his events. He has no real home, and when found in England he was initially denied bail because he couldn't provide the court with an address. His supporters come from all over the globe, part of his bond was posted by American film maker Michael Moore, and some of them are avenging his detention by launching denial of service attacks on foreign and domestic websites that have abandoned WikiLeaks. Now that he is free on bail, the question of whether he goes back to Sweden seems to be the least of his worries. This global story will, I suspect, end with his arrival in America and with a fantastic show trial which pits our much vaunted love for transparent democracy with the government's persistent efforts to keep its own secrets.