Is there any evidence that anyone has been hurt or killed by the leaks? I know that the Iraq and Afghanistan logs were scrubbed of at-risk names by the NYT and The Guardian, and that WikiLeaks approached the Department of Defense about doing the same thing but were rebuffed. Of course politicians, generals, etc. are going to say that there will be a great human cost to this, but they say all kinds of bullshit -- and really, the policies exposed by WikiLeaks (which pretty much everyone knew about already anyway) have hurt and killed a lot more people.
If I'm wrong, I'd be interested to hear about it. I certainly don't think informants or collaborators should be exposed and killed. But I do find it disturbing that none of us as individuals have any privacy anymore but if government or business elites are exposed it's the end of the world.
Thought this was interesting, from The Guardian:
"much of the secret material shows rather little difference between what the US says publicly and what these papers show privately.
Hillary Clinton has condemned the leaks, as she must; yet in general the US has responded maturely. Not a shining city on a hill, perhaps,
but still a pretty impressive place, shrouding itself in some layers of unnecessary secrecy. US defence secretary Robert Gates said this
week: "Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy? I think fairly modest." In the long run, he may be right."
More at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/01/student-finance-mischief-labour-libdems