Wikileaks, a website designed to let whistleblowers publish sensitive documents has been ordered shut down by a US federal judge at the request of a Swiss bank and its Cayman Islands subsidiary.
But the the court has failed to shut down the site, because the order is to remove the DNS hosting records, so that even though this prevents the www.wikileaks.org link from working, it doesn't actually take down the site: everything is up and running at 88.80.13.160 and this information is now spreading like wildfire on the Internet.
Some pundits have stated that "taking something off the Internet is like taking pee out of a pool," and this latest, extraordinary, attack on free speech in the U.S. (by ordering deletion of an entire site to stop circulation of a few documents) is giving Wikileaks a PR boost the Cayman Island bank lawyers clearly had not expected.
To find an injunction similar to the Cayman's case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.
The order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer.
Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the 'Wikileaks.org' name through -- California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for 'Wikileaks.org'.
Judge White ordered the California web hosting company Dynadot to "immediately clear and remove" records from Wikileaks and "prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank page," until the court can review the case further.
Wikileaks was launched in early 2007 with the help of Chinese dissidents to help whistleblowers in authoritarian countries post sensitive documents on the Internet without being traced. It was aimed at "oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East," but also was being used to post "unethical" behavior in Western countries.
Despite the injunction, Wikileaks states that it will "keep on publishing, in fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices."
Wikileaks is still publishing in Belgium and, Christmas Island - the latter offering its many "cover names". Dr. Rost is a pharma litigation consultant and pharmaceutical marketing expert. He is also the author of Killer Drug and The Whistleblower.
Comments