Most other documents leaked to WikiLeaks do not carry the same explosive potential as candid cables written by American diplomats.

As Barbara Streisand discovered, adopting a militaristic posture against a tech-savvy mob of civil libertarians is not going to be of much help: Many of them run their own servers and blogs - and have thousands of friends on their social networks - so overzealous attempts to silence them only lead to wider dissemination of sensitive information.

Free open-source software, by its nature, is unlikely to feature secret back doors that lead directly to Langley, Va.

If you want to plan a revolution, you never do it in public - the authorities show up and arrest everyone.

WikiLeaks is what happens when the entire US government is forced to go through a full-body scanner.

The global triumph of American technology has been predicated on the implicit separation between the business interests of Silicon Valley and the political interests of Washington.

However revolutionary it may be, the Internet still hasn't altered the basic law of human communication: Being nice to your interlocutors is a good way to start any negotiations, particularly, when being hostile is an open invitation for a cyber-fight.