I spoke too soon: El Reg reports (and Auntie confirms) that Julian Assange has been arrested by the Met “by appointment” (!) and is due in the City fo Westminster magistrates’ court later today over those Swedish sexual assault allegations.

Around an hour ago, I received an e-mail from my dearest mother.

The list of forwarded addresses went on for pages and pages, until…

I groaned. Of course, there is no way to “burn” a hard drive, aside from physically setting it alight. Sector Zero is simply the location of the bootloader, which is responsible for starting the operating system – it’s easy enough for someone qualified to repair it.

Again, another message forwarded to me by someone slightly less gullible than another gullible person who forwarded it to her (and everyone on the planet, by the looks of things.) I’d already written a triade about how to identify hoaxes (viz. all of them) and I’m afraid, in my anger, I went a bit Malcolm Tucker on my mother.

It was then that I realised, perhaps crucially, that I’d forgotten to mention a critical aspect in both my previous messages to my mother.

Image shamelessly pinched from Ars

There are three important notes to take from Cablegate.

The first aspect to note is that this release is obviously deeply embarrassing for the United States, with good reason; although the US portrays itself as a beacon of freedom—something to which there is a large degree of truth—the Cablegate releases paint a picture of a small-’c’ conservative country with its fingers in many pies, and with (dare I say it?) an institutional hostility to foreign countries.

Will this be a game-changer? Internally, yes, no doubt: the US embassies will now, at least, encrypt their cables. Are the contents of the cables released so far surprising? Not in any way: it would be foolish not to suspect that the US was indulging in a large amount of espionage, given the continuing war on terror, and the diplomatically tense situations in Iran, the rest of the Middle East and North Korea.

I also strongly doubt that Cablegate will affect the US’s standing in the rest of the world, given that there is already a shamefully large amount of anti-American sentiment. The initial release of cables will make for brief tabloid fodder, and then be forgotten. No doubt, the cables will be of huge interest in the future for historians; for this reason, the release is justified, if no other.

Note how I said initial release. There appears to be no arbitrary order in which Wikileaks is releasing the cables. Their Cablegate page states:

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

I must say, I find this explanation dubious. Surely an impartial release in the name of openness would drop everything at once, neatly categorised by origin, subject and date? Perhaps with a few pointers for the media to the juiciest stuff?

I am tempted to side (only partially, mind) with Iain Dale on this matter. These leaks have the potential to do great good: they might finally teach the United States not to act as the bullying older brother of NATO. On the other hand, it feels that Wikileaks (perhaps even Assange himself) is aiming for the maximum political impact.

Of course, calling for Wikileaks to qualify as a “terrorist organisation” stinks of arse-covering on the part of the American side, as do calls for Julian Assange to be assassinated and Bradley Manning to be executed. I don’t think Manning will be executed, and if he was it would be completely despicable: what we do in a civilised society is usually put such people in prison for a few years, release, let them win I’m A Celebrity and then wait for them to get a chat show on BBC2.

Assange, on the other hand, I have quite a lot less sympathy for. Of course, assassinating him would be an evil act more suited to Iran or Myanmar than the US. Arresting him is also out of the question: technically, he hasn’t done anything wrong in terms of Cablegate. (The sex crimes charge in Sweden is, of course, another matter, whether or not it’s a dirty-tricks campaign instigated by the Pentagon.)

However, it becomes plainly obvious, through various online interviews and the way he is co-ordinating Wikileaks, that Assange is more interested in pushing his political agenda than actually releasing information in the name of open government. He comes across as having a deeply anti-American attitude.

On the other hand, the third, and most important point to take from this whole saga is that regardless of any political or physical harm it will cause (of which I doubt there will be much, if any) it may teach the public what a lot of us have suspected for some time.

It’s fair to say, I think, that a large proportion of the American public thinks the world works like 24, because that’s what they’ve seen on TV: terrorists everywhere intent on destroying the United States with ever-more elaborate and large-scale attacks, whilst a few brave spooks save lives by extracting information from screaming men with spanners embedded in their scrota.

What the first set of leaks seem to prove is that the world doesn’t really work like 24 (although a bit of statistical knowledge would have told you that anyway.) It’s a lot more like The Thick of It.