Assange's arrest

The arrest of the WikiLeaks' founder-editor Julian Assange in London shows the limits to which Western societies are willing, actually unwilling, to allow freedom of expression.
American leaders are embarrassed not only because their backroom dealings with other countries are out in public but also because the leaks have uncovered the lies they tell their people to wage war and cause death and destruction in other parts of the world, putting the lives of their own people in harm's way. The prevalent view seems to be that freedom of expression is acceptable within the domestic context, not so when it exposes governments' policies of deceit and deception.
As per London's Metropolitan Police's arrest warrant "Assange is accused by Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation, alleged to have been committed in August 2010." Assange, of course, denies the charges. It needs to be noted that he had given his address to British immigration officials upon arrival there a few days ago, and voluntarily appeared before police for arrest. Yet the judge hearing his bail application refused to accept the offer of three well-known people, filmmaker Ken Loach, journalist John Pilger, and socialite Jemima Khan, of 20,000 pound security each, saying that he had grounds to believe if granted bail the accused would fail to surrender.
That will give some satisfaction to those in the US who have been baying for the WikiLeaks chief's blood ever since he started spilling their dark secrets onto his website. Republican Party leader Sarah Palin demanded that he should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden" while Defence Secretary Robert Gates termed the arrest as "good news". Many others have plainly asked for his assassination. However, the arrest is not going to make any difference as far as the website is concerned. It has vowed to continue to release more secret US diplomatic cables despite what happened to Assange.
WikiLeaks is not alone in unveiling secrets of US diplomacy. Four major newspapers, namely The Guardian, The New York Times, Der Spiegel, and Spanish publication El Pais, have also been publishing the same material. The editors considered them to be too important to ignore, and decided that the people had the right to know the truth about their government's clandestine policies and actions.
But WikiLeaks alone has earned the wrath of governments, probably, because of its world-wide reach. Irrespective of the outcome of the case against Assange, Internet technology is here to stay, and will be put to use whenever the opportunity presents itself to expose truth. This revolutionary way of reporting information is likely to give a new definition to media freedom.