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My prediction: he is found guilty in Sweden, pays a fine and/or has a short stint in jail, and then is set free for Wikileaks to continue unabated.
In any event, like Rym, I'm pretty sure Assange's arrest won't amount to anything.
What Wikileaks is doing here is what the government should be doing themselves. if I am living next to a possible security threat, or a target for possible terrorist attack, isn't it the responsibility of the government to tell me that? Should the first person to make it clear to me be a terrorist? No.
To be sure, Assange appears by all accounts to be a dick. But he was an inevitability, not an aberration. Closed systems with many people accessing them are effectively open systems if there is a will to see the information. I'm tired of a non-transparent government engaged in, for example, torture and rendition to foreign soil to avoid laws against said torture. I'm tired of undue secrecy and false security achieved by hoping that our enemies are too dim to use Google.
Recall some years ago when amateur astronomers began tracking US spy satellites and publishing their orbits. The US government raised many of the same concerns they're raising now with Wikileaks, hoping that no one in Palestime or Saudi Arabia or China had ever heard of a telescope.
What if the government asked engineers, scientists, technicians, and even just citizens, to share their best terrorism plans in order to then have a large body of possibilities for analysis and defense against? What if we openly warned people that "hey, this thing here is a likely target: keep your eyes open? We have millions of high-value targets. If we were open about all the ones which anyone with access to the Internet could find trivially, it's no more dangerous than if we were closed about them. A flood of information is just as useless as no information, but the latter is impossible to achieve in the modern world.
So, if Julian Assange is being arrested for having unprotected sex in Sweden, which can retroactively be called rape, or something like it, I think we should all admit to having unprotected sex. I have had unprotected sex. I once had unprotected sex in Sweden, although it was with a long-term girlfriend.
Difficulty: nothing that traces back to Wikileaks There are lots of places on Google maps, but not all are equally effective targets for terrorist attacks. The reason Secret information is Secret is that it can contain interpretations of a mess of information. What makes you think the government didn't take measures to secure those places? I'm asking honestly here, because I haven't found any information one way or another in that regard.
You know why it is so safe to fly? Because EVERYONE knows all the procedures, and is looking out for one another. You know why it is so safe to drive? Because there are loads of signs up saying "watch out!" You know why nobody sane smokes while filling their car up with petrol? Because it is common knowledge.
I have a lot of faith in humanity. This might be misplaced, but it's there. I think the net good of telling everyone about any possible or likely terrorist target is a GOOD thing, enough to outweigh the slightest slightest chance that the information provided is something a wannabe terrorist can't find elsewhere.
The real "threat" is when the government goes against smart people. Notice how we don't kill people or do anything evil, though we do many illegal things. Also notice that when we do something we basically can't be stopped no matter what. No amount of security or secrecy can stop us. When it comes to breaking DRM, sharing files, getting weed, or any of the other illegal things we do, that we feel are not wrong, we can't be stopped.