You may have seen the Guardian story about the founder of WikiLeaks, who is apparently in possession of much sensitive information from the U.S. State Department — information sent to him by an American intelligence analyst who is hailed as a “whistleblower” by his admirers, and regarded as a traitorous jerk by his detractors. The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, an Australian hacking specialist, went into hiding for a month. He has now reemerged. He says that his lawyers have told him to steer clear of America. There is a fair amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff in the Guardian article, as you can see, if you choose to read it. I had a taste of Assange — readers may remember this — at the Oslo Freedom Forum, in late April. He took to the stage to speak of his work and express his worldview, basically. He compared Auschwitz and Guantanamo Bay. Specifically, he compared their slogans: “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Makes Free”), in the former case, and “Honor-bound to Defend Freedom” in the latter case. He said that the Guantanamo slogan was worse “as a perversion of the truth.” Don’t be shocked, please: Such thinking — if you can call it that — is absolutely de rigueur in many circles, including ones in the United States. It will be interesting to see what WikiLeaks does in coming weeks and months — and whether the Obama administration, in any way, will be compelled to respond, if respond it can. By the way, I might say that WikiLeaks strikes me as, on balance, a good idea and virtuous enterprise: particularly as it can expose dictatorships, which deny people all sorts of rights. People under dictatorship have very few channels, very little recourse. People under dictatorship are deprived of necessary information. I guess I think about WikiLeaks the way I do about Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other such groups: Why not train your fire on closed societies, rather than firing on open societies? Granted, it’s much easier to go after open societies — they’re open, after all. That’s why Amnesty will file 100 reports against the American death penalty, or the use of Tasers by our police, before it will file one report against North Korea. Finding out about North Korea, and dealing with the Kim Jong Il regime, is hard. But so what? Anyone can go after America. Those groups will file 100 reports against Israel before filing one report against the P.A., or Syria, or Iran. (I’m exaggerating, of course, but to make a point.) Anyone can go after Israel, an open society. Israelis go after themselves! It is a real service to go after the closed societies, the places of darkness — you know? I wish WikiLeaks well. And in my well-wishing, I hope it will bear in mind the difference between a free society and an unfree one. In a free society, people can change the government if they don’t like what current officeholders are doing. In unfree societies — well, lotsa luck, Charlie.