SYDNEY — Hero hacker or the world's most dangerous tattletale? No Australian has been so applauded and reviled as Julian Assange. Holed up in a London jail awaiting charges for extradition to Stockholm, then to a likely one-way trip to a ghastly fate in Washington, Assange has burst onto the world stage as the shadowy figure behind revelations of what politicians in all countries try to hide from electors.

In the age of instant communication the telltale whistle-blower, sitting at a computer, has morphed into a force for good and evil. WikiLeaks, founded by Assange, is that new force.

His revelations of U.S. stuff-ups in Afghanistan and Iraq are bad enough. Now it seems WikiLeaks is ready to embarrass Big Business. Already it has revealed that BHP Billiton, a major Australian-based resources supplier, orchestrated the collapse of a $21 billion deal between rival Rio Tinto and the Chinese government-owned Chinalco. Stand by for the inside story on the real origin of the recent global financial crisis — how Wall Street almost tipped the world into depression.

Neither terrorist nor spy, the reclusive Assange has made bitter enemies in Washington. He is a freelance journalist. His "crime" is that he receives information through an electronic drop box using high-security technology. He uses standard journalistic checks to verify the often secret material before releasing it. The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel have published the cables.

Political leaders prefer their thoughts to be dressed up for public consumption, not published as spoken. For instance, we learn that Kevin Rudd, while then Australian prime minister, told visiting U.S. congressmen "Afghanistan scares the hell out of me." Not the kind of admission a loyal ally wants bandied around.

Canberra has escaped censure over that slip-up. Daniel Benjamin, counter terrorism coordinator in the State Department, has thanked Prime Minister Julia Gillard for trying to stop the diplomatic fallout by refusing to give oxygen to the WikiLeaks reports. Gillard says Assange acted illegally. Benjamin was scathing about the release of classified documents listing important U.S. assets around the world. In Australia these include nickel mines and an undersea telecommunications cable.

Opinion in Australia is divided between those who support non-disclosure of state and corporate secrets and those who demand the right to know. Loud protests are building among Assange supporters. They accuse governments of trying to "shoot the messenger."

Before his arrest Assange expressed Canberra's failure to protect him. He appealed for public sympathy by comparing his work to that of Keith Murdoch, the Melbourne journalist who revealed the incompetence of British Army generals in World War I. The Murdoch family's Australian newspapers are giving the case full play.

Many more countries will be drawn into the row as more cables are released. Russia is irate over WikiLeaks reports of NATO's latest eastward expansion, known as Operation Eagle Guardian. Washington fears the secret reports could revive bitter Cold War memories.

One odd reaction comes from India. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has asked its trainee diplomats to read WikiLeaks to "get a hang of the brevity with which thoughts and facts have been expressed."

Who is Julian Assange? The few friends who really know him describe him as a hard-core geek, a humanist, an awkward loner, one who can see flaws in both left and right though he is more closely aligned to the libertarian values of the right.

"Most of my childhood was pretty Tom Sawyer," he once told the New Yorker. "I had my own horse. I built my own raft. I went fishing. I was going down tunnels."

His mother Christine told the magazine she did not want Julian and his half-brother to have their spirits broken by conventional education. Her nomadic life resulted in the family moving 37 times before Julian was 14. In his late 20s he went to Melbourne University to study mathematics and physics without graduating.

Assange grew up in the northern state of Queensland at a time of corruption in government. Just before his arrest he told Murdoch's The Australian: "I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption are testimony to what happens when politicians gag the media from telling the truth."

Assange's early computer hacking got him into trouble. He broke into Canadian telecom Nortel's main terminal. He pleaded guilty to 25 hacking charges but avoided prison on condition he did not reoffend.

Jail has caught up with him. Now, however, WikiLeaks loyalists are still receiving and passing on an astonishing number of candid cables. And readers are still astonished at reading the things their governments and corporations say and do — as distinct from what they say they do. Whether the quiet Australian's campaign to curb what he calls "the politicians who gag the media from telling the truth" can continue to exist is a moot point.

Alan Goodall is former Tokyo bureau chief for The Australian.