I wouldn't use the term terrorism, because it's meaning was difficult to determine before 9/11 {freedom fighter or terrorist, you be the judge} and it's only go

I wouldn't use the term terrorism, because it's meaning was difficult to determine before 9/11 {freedom fighter or terrorist, you be the judge} and it's only gotten worse since. Plus it's politically loaded, right now is used to strip people of their citizenship, indefinitely detain them, torture them, etc. As far as Assange's goals, iirc he was trying to increase the cost of secrecy and corruption; which you seem to think will happen. As for the climategate emails, I'd say the more interesting portion was trying to block the publication of various scientists they disagreed with. Lastly, this is a simple problem to solve via encryption. Perhaps attacks like these will have some good in that encryption products will become easier to use. Microsoft outlook is very easy to use with PKI, we need to come up with in the browser to do encrypted webmail.