speaking of the Atlantic, read this article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/us-cant-connect-single-death-bradley-mannings-leaks/312643/

you've been mislead in thinking WikiLeaks releases harmed anyone. the US army harmed the people of Afghanistan, and that's what this story is about.

...they're not having the US government chasing them across the Atlantic.

Not yet they're not. Wait until a legal precedent is set with Assange (too many have been already) and any journalist the government doesn't like the look of can be locked away or worse.

Whichever way you look at it, exposing sources in an unethical way just doesn't warrant the treatment Assange has gotten nor the threat of three lifetimes in prison. This isn't about that, nor is this isn't about a really stretched charge of hacking, it's about showing anti-imperialist and anti-war journalists and whistleblowers who's in charge.

There hasnt been a single case of anyone being hurt based on wikileaks documents. So this is just an excuse for attacks on freedom of press.

You may have got a couple of facts wrong:

https://www.laprogressive.com/the-media-in-the-united-states/wrong-about-assange

"Wikileaks had hundreds of thousands of documents it had gotten from Manning – the war logs and State Department cables — for a considerable period in 2010 and went to “extraordinary lengths to publish them in a responsible and redacted manner,” the submissions to a lower U.K. court said. WikiLeaks held back information while it formed media partnerships with news organizations such as The Guardian, The New York Times and DER SPIEGEL to manage the release of the material. Assange’s legal team cited named witnesses, various journalists who worked with Assange on the process. Those witnesses testified to the rigor of the redaction effort.

The media partners’ work on the Afghan war logs included approaching the White House before releasing them. In July 2010, Wikileaks also entered dialogue with the White House about redacting names. On July 25, 2010, WikiLeaks held back publication of 15,000 documents on Afghanistan to safeguard its “harm minimization process” even after its media partners published stories.

Redaction of the Iraq War diaries was likewise “painstakingly approached” and involved the development of special redaction software. Publication was delayed in August 2010 despite this annoying some media partners because Assange didn’t want to rush.

Un-redacted publication of the State Department cables in September 2011 was undertaken by parties unconnected to WikiLeaks, and despite WikiLeaks’ efforts to prevent it, the legal submissions state. Those who revealed un-redacted cables have never been prosecuted nor requested to remove them from the internet.

[Ed.: John Young, founder of Cryptome, testified at Assange’s hearing that he published the unredacted cables before WikiLeaks but was never questioned by police. The password to the unredacted cables was published by Guardian journalists Luke Harding and David Leigh before Cryptome did.]"