As Governments, with the help of religious fundamentalists, find more and more ways to erode rights etc and as the conventional press has become less interested in fact than opinion and has completely lost its sense of direction when it comes to investigative journalism, something like Wikileaks is necessary IMO.
Apart from anything else it gives the conventional press evidence that they are no longer able, or perhaps willing, to pursue and a place for whistleblowers to put evidence out there in a time when people would rather keep their heads in the sand and shoot the messenger.
Think back to the events of the past that have been exposed by whistleblowers and through the actions of those who take on the powers that be.
To listen to and believe politicians, bureaucrats or religious fundamentalists (of any persuasion) is folly, as is taking any notice of propagandised opinion wearing the mask of journalism - No names mentioned...
Hey, something funny for the religious conservatives out there:- when I was a kid going to church I was taught a method of working out what name (number of the beast) could decode as 666 - count the letters in single digits up to 10, then by tens up to 100, then count by 100s.

abcdeFghijklmnOpqrstuvwXyz.
Take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt, no matter where it comes from, and you might see the truth hidden in there somewhere. We live in ugly and interesting times, there are many bad guys out there but Wikileaks is not one of them IMO.
Maybe a bad guy could take advantage of the Wikileaks system but they do that with politics, religion and other media anyway. At least Wikileaks is about trying to present truth and fact, not just opinion.
Wikileaks also showed Australians what was the real thinking behind internet filtering when our government decided that it might use its filter to block Wikileaks, or parts of it.
Ugly times.
Tim.
(Apparently it should be 616 anyway but who's counting.

)