counterexample: before Snowden revealed Prism, it had been in operation for years, with thousands of people knowing of its existence.
the day before that leak you could have used exactly the same argument against the existence of a comprehensive NSA surveillance program ... someone would have leaked it already, right?
good example but not sure they fall into the same field given that PRISM was inherently a hidden project and bitcoin is not. Releasing details of PRISM would have led to the NSA/CIA hunting you down and given the nature of PRISM those involved with it could have been faily certain that the NSA had the ability to do that. With bitcoin it is a public project so releasing details of the creator(s) would not impact on bitcoin and there is less chance of the creators "coming after the leaker". I think there is a vastly differnt risk analysis to releasing details of these 2 projects.
agreed it's not the same degree of risk - but I'd say that if a nation state was behind bitcoin, but purporting to be a lone engineer for some nefarious purpose, it's sure going to make leaking that classified fact a fairly serious crime.
the day before that leak you could have used exactly the same argument against the existence of a comprehensive NSA surveillance program ... someone would have leaked it already, right?