Wikileaks back in action

By Dave Nixon

The Wikileaks ‘whistleblower’ site that was obliged by a court order to cut its primary domain after a grievance from Swiss bank, Julius Baer & Co, is back online after a judge ruled in its favour.

Reversing the order of 15 February against Wikileaks, US District Judge Jeffrey White seems to have had second thoughts about his former decision to order the suspension of the site’s main domain, wikileaks.org.

Julius Baer & Co had launched the legal action after copies of documents appeared on Wikileaks that appeared to illustrate that it had assisted customers to launder money criminally through the Cayman Islands, a submission the bank rejects.

The site was obscure before the case, but has since become a celebrated cause, attracting the enthusiastic support of civil libertarians the world over. Undeniably, Judge White, who has come under concentrated vast pressure from this constituency in the US, was forced to admit that the shutdown did raise “serious questions of prior restraint (on speech) and possible violations of the First Amendment.”

Some days ago, Julius Baer & Co disseminated a press statement claiming that, conversely, the leaking of documents harmed privacy rights. The bank claims the documents are, at any rate, forgeries.

Judge White has now conceded that the US courts might not have authority over Wikileaks at all since the bank had failed to establish that is was based in the country. During the fortnight in which Wikileaks.org remained offline, the site continued through a long list of mirror domains.