re: #1 Charles

Julian Assange, however, is to be allowed complete license to reveal the email of anyone on planet Earth.

He is getting his own revealed, too. I guess you will have to judge the cases on a clear principle. The judge in this case pointed out the principle of “probable cause” which is specifically protected by the Fourth Amendment. Of course, this applies to law enforcement and their abilities to gather admissable evidence for a trial.

In cases of whistleblowers and leakers and the releasing of secret material, other principles seem to be more appropriate, like public interest which I guess could be argued had a role in the release of the US diplomatic cables (which in a lot of cases were classified but not private but state communication) or the private Neo-Nazi mailing list.

Ultimately, it will be up for the courts to decide. As has been pointed out elsewhere (see also NY Times), the prosecution seems to not want to go after Assange simply for the dissemination of the classified material, because that would make things shaky in relation to the other media outlets who also published the cables. Rather, they are trying to establish the conspiracy case.