A few days ago, David Brooks mentioned that one of Assange's data dumps included soldiers' Social Security numbers. I found it hard to believe--until I came on this revealing profile of Assange that ran in the June 7 New Yorker.
Assange does not recognize the limits that traditional publishers do. Recently, he posted military documents that included the Social Security numbers of soldiers, and in the Bunker I asked him if WikiLeaks’ mission would have been compromised if he had redacted these small bits. He said that some leaks risked harming innocent people—"collateral damage, if you will"—but that he could not weigh the importance of every detail in every document.
Reading this sent a chill down my spine. Let's say it all together as a group--there is no defensible reason to release someone's Social Security number. Period. And after reading this, he doesn't deserve our support.
In the name of greater transparency, Assange has compromised the privacy of innocent American citizens. In my book, he's no better than Orly Taitz, who as many of you know has been known to post the Social Security numbers and addresses of innocent people in her windmill-tilting expedition to prove Obama is guilty of Social Security fraud. If an ordinary journalist engaged in this kind of behavior, he'd have long since been sued into poverty. Assange deserves the same treatment.
The New Yorker article also reveals that Assange has not been above hacking into private email accounts. For instance, he once posted the contents of Sarah Palin's private Yahoo account. Not even the Diva deserves that.
There is something fundamentally wrong when transparency in government comes at the expense of the right to privacy. In that respect, Assange is a textbook case of what the First Amendment is not. For that reason, someone needs to lock him up and toss away the key.