Advocates of information transparency point out that even if WikiLeaks founders, the idea it represents — a transnational mechanism to disseminate information beyond the reach of any government, corporation or organization — will live on. In fact, Anonymous, a collective of hackers, announced last week that unless a kidnapped member of their collective were released, it would reveal the names of various Mexican government officials, police officers and journalists who had cooperated with the cartel known as Los Zetas.

But the primary threat to the future of WikiLeaks and other like-minded organization has less to do with hacker zeal or organizational specifics than it does with information dynamics. It is as basic as supply and demand: There has never been a shortage of willing recipients of classified or private information that has significant news value, but leakers with both the motivation and access are far more rare. A great deal of leaking takes place on a retail basis, as any city hall reporter will tell you. But giant data dumps don’t happen often because many factors have to align: an aggrieved party; access to a large, consequential stash of documents that are of public importance; and a gap in security big enough to allow the lifting of such documents.

Let’s concede that WikiLeaks, whatever its excesses, represented a genuinely new paradigm for transparency and accountability. It became a fundamentally different and powerful whistle, one that could be blown anonymously — or not, as it turned out — to very remarkable effect. Whistle-blowers in possession of valuable and perhaps incriminating corporate and government information now had a global dead drop on the Web. Traditional news organizations watched, first out of curiosity and then with competitive avidity, as WikiLeaks began to reveal classified government information that in some instances brought the lie to the official story.

But while WikiLeaks reduced the friction in leaking secret documents, it did not reduce the peril to those who might choose to do so. Part of the promise of WikiLeaks was that it would eliminate digital fingerprints. While those efforts seemed to work, military prosecutors were nonetheless able to tag Pfc. Bradley E. Manning as a suspect using traditional investigative measures. Private Manning, who is accused of leaking many of the more important WikiLeaks documents, is being held in Fort Leavenworth, Kan., accused of “aiding the enemy.” His presence there is a stark reminder that despite campaign promises about openness and transparency in governing, the Obama administration has a very hard-line approach when it comes to state secrets, one that has not only affirmed the Bush administration’s approach, but has done so with renewed focus. Just 17 months into his administration, President Obama had already prosecuted more alleged leakers than any of his predecessors.

All of this is a reminder that when it comes to leaking, it is not whistles that are in short supply, but whistleblowers. WikiLeaks represented a major technological advance in the art and mechanism of the leak, and it eliminated the need to spend many secret hours at the copy machine, as Daniel Ellsberg did with the Pentagon Papers. But easing the modality of transmission does not obviate the legal and social strictures against making the private public.