Wikileaks has as its mission to release classified information to the public, if you are going to do that then you know for a fact that there will be people that are at risk affected by it, that's the nature of the releasing of information that people want to be kept secret.

If there is going to be a transition at some point from a system of closed governments with secrets to one that is open because secrets can be leaked as fast as they are created then I suspect that there will be a lot more people 'at risk' than just the people named in these documents.

Does that mean that striving to open any and all information that is currently under wraps should be abandoned ? I think it shouldn't be, and just like there is collateral damage in a real war there will be collateral damage in a war that centers around information.

I don't think that such a change could be effected without it.

No matter how much you would redact, you could always argue that someone is at risk because of releasing information on current ops.

Ask Valerie Plame what it feels like when information is leaked to serve opportunistic goals, and that was the government doing the leaking, with the express purpose of harming an individual, not exactly to promote a society without secrets.

Really, if anything, I think wikileaks should not even have attempted to redact anything, just like a common carrier they should have passed it on verbatim, by attempting to redact they assume some responsibility, which they could have avoided by not redacting at all.

I understand that that may offend your sensibilities because 'peoples lives are at risk' but that's just a variation on the 'think of the children' argument.

War is ugly, releasing information about a war that is in progress is going to be ugly too, I can't see how it could even be different if you decided to do that.