On that day, the unsympathetic judicial head of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser will reveal her decision on the Old Bailey proceedings that took place between September and October this year.

Despite Assange's team being able to marshal an impressive, even astonishing array of sources and witnesses demolishing the prosecution's case for extradition to the United States, power can be blindly vengeful.

Such blindness is much in evidence in a co-authored contribution to The Daily Signal from this month. The authors are insipidly predictable: national security and technology types with comic strip names (Charles "Cully" Stimson; Klon Kitchen) and rule of law advocates who seemingly campaign against their own brief (John G. Malcolm).

Having not bothered to read the evidence submitted at the extradition trial, the authors are obedient to a fictitious record. This includes allegations that WikiLeaks harmed US diplomatic relations; the stubborn libel that Assange's actions, far from exposing US atrocities, led to a loss of life; and the disruption of essential "intelligence sources and methods". (Accountability can be expensive.)

The authors fail to appreciate the dangers of the Assange case to the First Amendment, free speech and the publication of national security information. They merely claim to be free speech defenders, only to neatly hive Assange's activities off from its protections. Free speech is a fine thing as long as it is innocuous and inconsequential.

Suppression of speech, in a free society, is wrong. But Assange is not a free-speech hero."