Photos of Assange, his narrow features and wispy white hair, are already as synonymous with the notion of the outlaw folk hero as those of the amply bearded Kelly. Assange is a cyber-bushranger: a renegade taunter of authority and inspiration to many who marvel at his daring to challenge the status quo. Like the 19th-century outlaw, the 21st-century incarnation has his hideouts, sympathisers and accomplices. In the digital age, though, the weapon is a website; the bullets, information. The problem for today's enforcers is that it is not at all clear if it's actually illegal for Assange to shoot. Under constant attack, the controversial site is as much a fugitive as its creator, lately finding refuge on a Swiss host. Through digital proxies, mirrors and shifting servers, the website is Assange's own iconic clunky suit of armour, its hourglass logo as emblematic of resistance as Kelly's imposing, welded steel helmet. Writing in a live chat on The Guardian website from an undisclosed location believed to be in Britain, Assange responded to the Australian government's WikiLeaks investigating taskforce and its stated support for America's international manhunt. The website's founder, who earlier called for the resignation of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, again took direct aim at his accusers.

Questioning what it meant to be an Australian citizen, he wrote: "Does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties?'' Attacking Australia's Attorney-General specifically, in a manner no doubt even more pleasing to his growing army of online-savvy sympathisers, a link on the WikiLeaks website's homepage to an AAP report about the government's quest for the legal mechanism to prosecute Assange is attached with the words, ''Robert McClelland is a US suckhole, worse than Howard on Hicks, and needs to go." For his part, reaffirming his government's commitment to supporting the US rather than the WikiLeaks boss, McClelland stated on Saturday that cancelling Assange's passport had been considered. The reason he gave for not cancelling the passport was that it could in fact be "counterproductive to the law enforcement", a passport being one of the few ways of tracking a fugitive's movements if and when they travel internationally. It had nothing to do, then, with the dubious ethics and flimsy legalities of exiling an Australian citizen from his own country on the basis that, as McClelland himself put it, "United States laws may have been breached"? That should concern us more than anything so far revealed by the leaked US diplomatic cables.

So, Arab governments are as concerned as any other about a nuclear armed Iran, Russia is a mafia-like state, China hacked Google and annoyed Kevin Rudd at Copenhagen but agrees that North Korea is a basket case, and Britain is desperate to keep relations with the US as ''special'' as possible, while its forces have been less than effective in Afghanistan. Hardly revelations. Rather, isn't it reassuring that our governments do actually broadly come to the same conclusions about the big international issues as any rational, average voter? It's a shame such clarity of reason evades our elected representatives when it comes to how they react to WikiLeaks and its creator. In reality, national feelings have been hurt more than national security has been endangered - although Monday's release of a list of facilities considered by the US as ''critical'' to security perhaps crosses a line. Assange mocks those in charge, and as happened after Kelly rode his policeman, the authorities need their revenge; explaining why some of America's more hysterical politicians have variously and ludicrously called for WikiLeaks to be classified as a terrorist organisation and for Assange to be put to death; far more shocking than anything said in the cables. Only slightly less hysterically, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week labelled Assange "grossly irresponsible" and the publication of the cables on WikiLeaks as "illegal".

Whether it is irresponsible or not is a matter of opinion. But what Australian law prohibits its citizens from publishing US diplomatic emails on a European hosted website? A little like Kelly and the stolen horse, it was someone else, let's not forget, who ''stole'' the data. Assange merely published the documents. Is he any more guilty than other news organisations that publish the details? Loading Bryce Lowry is the Australasian media publisher with Blue Sky Publications, which produces the Australian Times in London. Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU