“It may be hard for the media to resist a big email dump, but there are long-term risks. Regular dumps of classified documents and other internal communications have become a fixture of modern life, thanks in part to stateless—and frequently lawless—entities like WikiLeaks. But is publishing those leaks always the right thing to do? That’s one of the questions raised by the recent leak of private emails from John Podesta, the campaign chairman for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The WikiLeaks dump consists of tens of thousands of emails, sent to a wide variety of people, about a range of topics that includes both the Clinton campaign and virtually every other aspect of Podesta’s personal life….The most interesting thing about the leak is that it appears to have been carried out with the assistance of certain elements within the Russian government, according to a statement from the U.S. intelligence department. In that sense, it seems to be the fulfillment of a request from Republican candidate Donald Trump, who publicly asked for the Russian security apparatus to hack his opponent’s emails…”