Naturally, some antileakers are reciprocating with attacks on one of Anonymous's own sites, taking it offline. It's a shootin' war, and no one knows where it will lead or when it will end. You'd best keep your head low.

I realize there are other events taking place in Tech Land these days. Google, for example, seems determined to roll out a new operating system every damned day -- , , , and so on. But I can't stop thinking about WikiLeaks.

Why? Because this is the single most important story to hit the Internet ever. It dwarfs the Drudge Report's Monica Lewinsky scoop, the Twitter anti-Tehran uprising, and even the Pam Anderson sex video. Never before has a small band of whatever-you-want-to-call-thems taken on every major nation simultaneously, twisting them into knots. But thanks to the distributed nature of the Net, they have -- and I suspect they won't be the last.

Also: Journalism as we knew it is over. No more trade-offs between revealing some things while keeping other information private, of choosing between the necessary secrets governments must keep and the public's right to know -- it's now a free-for-all.

Some are joyously welcoming the new age of near-total transparency. I don't think that's necessarily a good thing. As many have pointed out, a world in which becomes a world where no one is willing to share anything of importance. And if real blood may spill.