look over your shoulder starting now, Assange.

Julian Assange was mistaken; it wasn't when he was leaking military secrets, or diplomatic cables that he was in the most danger. Now that he's releasing tax avoidance strategies of the rich? Yeah, if he hadn't hired a food taster yet, this might be the time:

[...] the WikiLeaks founder today pledged to make public the confidential tax details of 2,000 wealthy and prominent individuals, after being passed the data by a Swiss banker who claims the information potentially reveals instances of money-laundering and large-scale illegal tax evasion.

In a carefully choreographed handover in central London, Rudolf Elmer, formerly a senior executive at the Swiss bank Julius Baer, based in the Cayman islands, said he was handing the data to WikiLeaks as part of an attempt "to educate society" about the amount of potential tax revenues lost thanks to offshore schemes and money-laundering.

The biggest surprise about the leaks to date is, of course, that there's very little at all surprising about them: it's assumed that the American military mistakenly kill non-combatants, and that a nuclear Iran scares the hell out of pretty much everyone. But while we all know intuitively that the rich use Switzerland as a tax haven, the prospect of naming names? Yikes. Duck and cover, folks.

[The Guardian]