In the wake of Chelsea (nee Bradley) Manning's sentence of 35 years in military prison for leaking the massive volume of documents now known as Cablegate to the media organization Wikileaks, there is now a hard as diamond legal precedent that criminalizes whistleblowing, the act of making evidence of misconduct, fraud, unethical, or illegal activity known. It is widely believed (often correctly so) that disclosing such activities to what are considered the proper channels will result in serious repercussions. It is also widely believed that such disclosures will have little to no positive effect because those reported on are often …

For several years now, the website Wikileaks (mirrored across the global Net as well as a couple of darknets) has been the first place to go if you wanted to learn about anything shady going on. Founded as a clearinghouse for whistleblowers and do-gooders by Sunshine Press, they make it their business to archive and disseminate sensitive documents that were leaked because they provide proof of dastardly goings-on in the world, from illegal search and seizure to confidential e-mails about screwed up policies and procedures to hit lists of thorns in the collective side of the powers that be. A …