President Trump did not grant him a pardon. A British judge did not uphold the substantial grounds for his appeal against extradition, but denied it on the grounds that he could not be prevented from taking his own life in a United States prison. In the high security prison where he is now held, he is not allowed access to a computer. These bare facts obscure the significance of the questions raised for the kind of society we wish to create.
A recent and stimulating book brings the focus into a broadview. Comprising a series of contributions by his supporters, A Secret Australia reflects on Assange’s contribution to journalism and public life. It sets it against the need for and the threats to ensuring an informed citizenry on which democracy rests. As the contributors to A Secret Australia show, and particularly Assange himself in the text of his conversation with Scott Ludlam, Assange had an unrivalled practical knowledge of internet technology, saw early its contrasting possibilities to enlarge or to limit personal freedom before the state, and set out passionately to use it to keep citizens informed about what governments and corporations were doing in their name.
Wikileaks was an elegant means to that end. It allowed citizens to assess the match between what governments knew and were doing and what they publicly claimed to know and were actually doing. To this end it provided new possibilities for journalism. Instead of relying on leaks from politicians and civil servants, they could have access to huge dumps of documents provided by people appalled by the corrupt or mendacious behaviour of governments and corporations. The sources of the documents, too, and the journalists who used them, could be protected by the use of encrypted drop boxes.
The leaks meant that journalists’ interpretation could be supported or tested against documentary evidence and a secure documentary archive maintained. The international reach of the internet encouraged journalists and researchers around the world to cooperate in searching and interpreting the significance of documents, especially those dealings with international relationships or the behaviour of large corporations.
The great achievement of Julian Assange and of Wikileaks has been to place freedom of speech in a large and serious context. This contrasts with the jejeune and narrow framework of popular debate that asserts the right of individuals to say what they wish, while setting that right in a partisan view of public life. In