The reason Assange publishes documents which may contain personally identifying information is a philosophical one. Unlike Snowden, who advocates censoring documents before release, Assange maintains that censorship can discredit documents in the court of law (tampering with evidence) and therefore abstains from doing so.

It seems like they edit content when it's convenient[1]. And they make very obvious threats when caught.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/9/12864328/wikileaks-threat-r...

But guaranteeing a lot of completely innocent people are victims of identity theft isn't a heroic act, it is a super douchey thing to do.

"Douchey" or not is for you to decide, but you're right that Assange's philosophy to release untampered documents causes collateral damage. It's a tough call, honestly: would you have your leaked documents' contents nullified in court due to censorship or risk collateral damage (identity theft) and maintain your leaked documents' impact as evidence in a court of law (which could potentially lead to the prosecution of a criminal)?

The idea that releasing documents uncensored has anything to do with courts is nonsense. Assange claims to be doing journalism. You know what a court can do when a real journalist publishes redacted materials? Ask for unredacted copies.

Publishing unredacted documents does help sell their authenticity to the general public but I think too often the harm is too great, especially to innocent parties.

Honestly, I don't know why I hadn't thought of this. Good point!

It's like a receipt for a vote. It seems reasonable in the beginning...

But what if Wikileaks waited to be asked... Who do they give the docs to? Just courts, or interested civilians? If the former, how does that help citizens know what's going on, and if the later, what's the difference between just releasing it and selectively releasing it? This also requires people risk their freedom to request the full version.

And more critically, that means to prevent the publishing of full documents you simply need to kill the messenger.

Running Wikileaks the other way wouldn't be useful and still wouldn't appease the wrong-doers.

The uncensored documents could be provided to courts and legal agents (civilian and government) if requested, while leaving the censored ones available to the public and media. Censorship is not, itself, a destructive act with respect to the original material.

If leaked-but-redacted documents were of interest for a prosecution, couldn’t the originals be obtained by subpoena, either to WikiLeaks or (preferably) their original source?