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Whistle-blowing and publishing should not be seen as a crime, and certainly not as terrorism.

Terrorism has come to publishing. It is a grave concern when criticism is turned to mortal threats.

When whistleblowers come forward, we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.

It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.

The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform.

Whistleblowers are typically rendered incommunicado, either because they're in hiding, or advised by their lawyers to stay silent, or imprisoned. As a result, the public hears only about them, but never from them, which makes their demonization virtually inevitable.

Withholding information that would get innocent people killed was the right thing to do, not a journalistic sin.

This was not an act of terrorism, but it was an act of war.

Our enemy of international terrorism respects no laws of warfare or morality, and its individual members take innocent lives, just to create chaos for news cameras.

The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea.