I'm sure if you told those countries surrounding Iran it was good news they'd disagree.

This just proves the internet needs regulation, it's 2010 and not 1993. The days of the wild wild web are over. Actions on the internet should be treated exactly as they would be treated in real life. He should be prosecuted. I'd even say you could classify wikileaks as aiding a terrorist organization since terrorist organizations can access the documents.

Let's put it this way:
You find a camera with surveillance videos/images on it from your country's spy agency (whatever it may be). I'm not up on my knowledge of legal proceedings in this area but I think if you find government property you have to return it? People had to return debris found from Challenger and Columbia when they found it (ie. government property). Publishing documents on wikileaks for terrorist organizations and other foreign governments to access would be the same as giving the memory card from that camera to a foreign government or terrorist organization.

This case is just showing us that the internet needs regulation. Let me just say that I do support net neutrality but the regulation I am speaking of is regulation of what kind of information can be published by law and what kind of websites can exist. Call it China or whatever you want but in this day and age it's needed.

From a technical standpoint it is possible to remove the DNS references to a website. This basically means that the website still exists but the domain name would no longer work. Governments could go a step further and enact laws that would prevent certain types of websites from being hosted on their soil. Would this work due to the mobile nature of websites? Not all that well.

For more stringent protection to happen internet filtering would have to be adopted by a worldwide body, maybe the UN?

This is just the tip of the iceberg and needs to be dealt with. I address this issue in one of my past Informer articles about what a redesigned internet would look like taking into account modern issues.

That's the problem, it's not hilarious. Lives are at stake. Lives of human beings are at stake because of his decisions.

@Duke and anyone else who is concerned about the leaker Of course the internet isn't secure but if you were presented with information like this would you do the same, that is publish information rather than returning it to the source?

I kinda have to agree with Shane for the most part, it's not really hilarious and some people's lives are at stake. Some of the documents are truly very interesting, like the fact that other middle-eastern countries are also nervous about Iran being nuclear (as they should be, super-fundamentalist anythings and possible WMD's or dirty bombs are not something you want together). The irony here is you don't see other countries being "this careless", but they are usually just as if not more, it's just there are less people that either can or will get the word out (ex. China w/ censorship).

On the other hand, if you were to just find a briefcase full of top-secret documents belonging to, let's say the CIA, you probably read what's in it and then either give it back to them, sell it back to the CIA or sell it so someone else then flee the country. I think this just is one more example that shows the need of both an Internet Government (with security officers and other agents). Along with a complete internet rework with resources for these agents and office-holders, more IP adresses, and an easier, more practical and safer navigation system that would be much harder to spoof or phish with.

Steve Gibson for President of the Internet