That public destruction of society's right to the facts on their governments.

It's rather disturbing watching American government officials turn into Nixonian stormtroopers.

I suspect all the attempts to incarcerate or discredit Assange is nothing more than a blatant attempt to stop the flow of information on government activities to the American public.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/

There are many implications behind what's currently going, but this is perhaps the most important one - probably the one that most governments find the most threatening -

Wikileaks is a powerful new way for reporters and human rights advocates to leverage global information technology systems to break the heavy veil of government and corporate secrecy that is slowly suffocating the American press. The likely arrest of Assange in Britain on dubious Swedish sex crimes charges has nothing to do with the importance of the system he has built, and which the US government seems intent on destroying with tactics more appropriate to the Communist Party of China -- pressuring Amazon to throw the site off their servers, and, one imagines by launching the powerful DDOS attacks that threatened to stop visitors from reading the pilfered cables.