SECRETS are as old as states, and so are enemies', critics' and
busybodies' efforts to uncover them. But the impact and scale of
the latest disclosures by WikiLeaks, a secretive and autocratic
outfit that campaigns for openness, are on a new level. A
disillusioned 23-year-old American official, Bradley Manning,
downloaded from a supposedly secure government network more than
250,000 diplomatic “cables”: in effect, government e-mails. They
ranged from the almost-public to those classified “secret”. He
gave them to WikiLeaks, which has provided them to international
news outlets, including Germany's Der Spiegel, El País in Spain
and Britain's Guardian (which, in turn, passed them to the New
York Times).  The first slivers started appearing on November
29th. They range (see article) from the explosive to the ho-hum.
Diplomats being instructed to act like spies, snooping on Ban
Ki-moon and filching the frequent-flyer and credit-card details
of other senior UN officials, sounds like a scandal. So is the
“shadowy”