Ever since people invented the idea of utopia there have been stories of dystopia. In the 20th century the most influential dystopian works were the novels of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, a short-lived idealist and an all-around proto-hippie, respectively. When not fighting in foreign wars and taking mescaline, Orwell and Huxley penned fiction about how people in positions of power would one day use technology to enslave the bodies and minds of all mankind. Of course, their take on the future of techno-politics was more informed by early 20th century fascism than anything looming in the world's wealthiest republics. Like pretty much all science fiction of the 20th century (and don't you dare start talking about Snowcrash), Orwell and Huxley's work failed to anticipate the Internet. People have thus always assumed that if we ever got an all-knowing information network, a true Big Brother, it would be under the absolute control of a power-mad few and not the unmanageable chaos we have today. That's why Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has become something of a modern day folk hero instead of a steely tyrant who hates free thought, and also why people currently in power hate him enough to hunt and harass him.

While many of us spent our weekends enjoying the last bits of the waning summer and sleeping with a small chorus of adoring supermodels (like I often do), Mr. Assange had to fight off unfounded allegations of rape in Sweden. See, because he'd almost certainly be arrested by the illustrious Department of Homeland Security the second he stepped foot in the States, Julian Assange has been hopping around to different foreign locales for a few years while managing Wikileaks, perhaps the most powerful tool on the Internet today. He has done this presumably because countries like Sweden seemed safer for him. Maybe they still are but it's going to be harder to make the case now.

The short version of the story is that someone in the Swedish justice system who has been referred to by the dubious title of "on-call prosecutor" issued a warrant for Julian Assange, then living in northern Sweden, on charges of rape and molestation. Aside from "on-call prosecutor" sounding a bit like "rent-a-cop", apparently all it takes to get a rape warrant in Sweden is for someone to literally phone in the accusation. There was no investigation or other due process, just an immediate arrest warrant all based on the fact that Assange was a flight risk. Thankfully, the actual Chief Prosecutor in Sweden had the warrant revoked the moment she got out of bed. The charges have since been dropped because of a pesky technicality like a complete lack of evidence.

Ever since the story broke there have been suggestions floating around that Assange was the victim of a failed framing, or at least a smear campaign. Normally I'd dismiss the idea outright that the CIA or some other government agency would try to put a collar around a media upstart, or that they wouldn't screw it up if they did, but that's just my memories of a competent government talking. I wouldn't put it above a 21st century American government to allocate resources for a stupid and destructive purpose.

But even if this mess in Sweden wasn't the result of a government vendetta against Julian Assange, the public reaction to it speaks volumes on its own about where our society is going vis. public trust. We'd rather invest our knowledge and belief in a few informed Internet people than in our politicians, and why not? After all, the Wikileaks Afghanistan documents scandal has been more effective in both reflecting and informing public opinion about the war than any amount of traditional punditry. The government argument has been that the Wikileaks docs put U.S. operations in Afghanistan in danger, making maneuvers more risky. In the long run, isn't that a good thing? In the long run, isn't it a triumph for the Internet to make it harder for governments to wage war? Right now, the government's argument against Wikileaks has come down to "We wanna do things we shouldn't be doing and you're tattling on us when we try!" Assuming he, ya know, didn't rape anybody, I hope Julian Assange and his team of investigators keep digging until there are as many cameras pointing at Big Brother as at the Proles.