Free Speech Has A Number: 88.80.13.160

Whistleblower Web Site Flourishes Overseas Despite Judge's Order To Block Domain Name

(CBS/AP)  The whistleblower site Wikileaks.org has found itself in the center of a storm of protest by Internet activists and libertarians over a court-ordered shutdown.

"Shutdown" isn’t quite the word, and therein lies the unique situation in which the Web site currently exists.

Wikileaks claims to have posted 1.2 million leaked government and corporate documents that it says expose unethical behavior, including a 2003 operation manual for the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Last week, under pressure from a Swiss bank which said a disgruntled ex-employee had posted stolen documents on the site, Wikileak's San Mateo, Calif.-based hosting company, Dynadot, agreed to turn off the site and prevent Wikileaks from transferring its domain name to another host.

The Zurich-based Bank Julius Baer & Co. claimed in court papers that a former executive stole the documents, and in some cases altered some of them, though it gave no details. It said the documents were illegally posted to www.wikileaks.org.

The papers allegedly point to money laundering and tax evasion schemes at the bank's Cayman Islands branch. According to Wikileaks, they refer to "extremely wealthy and in some cases, politically sensitive" clients from the U.S., Europe, China and South America.

The next day, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White issued a series of rulings demanding Dynadot shut down Wikileaks. He also ordered Dynadot to disable Wikileak's Web address ("Oops! We can’t find the webpage you're looking for"), and prevent the transfer of the domain name to another registrar.

Most chillingly, the judge ordered Dynadot to turn over the "IP addresses and associated data used by any person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain name" - in effect, parting the curtain behind which anonymous whistleblowers have been passing documents.

Wikileaks said in a statement that shutting down the entire Web site - instead of narrowly ordering the removal of the disputed materials - amounts to unconstitutional "prior restraint" by the government of an entire publishing organization.

"This is akin to seizing all the copies of The New York Times, locking the doors and ordering the landlords not to let anyone back in the building," said Julie Turner, a Palo Alto Internet attorney who briefly represented Wikileaks (but not during last week's hearing in front of White). Wikileaks was not represented at that hearing.

Wikileaks vowed to continue publishing the bank's documents on mirror sites in other countries, such as England (Wikileaks.org.uk), Belgium (Wikileaks.be) and Germany (Wikileaks.de).

David Ardia, an Internet speech expert at Harvard Law School, said a court has never before ordered an entire Web site shut down over a document dispute. He said it struck a nerve.

"This is a prior restraint in the most extreme fashion," Ardia said. "This is a judge who doesn't have a good understanding of the Internet."

Wikileaks' Web site says it was launched by Chinese dissidents, journalists and others, but it's unclear where the organization is based.

"The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction," Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said in the e-mail statement issued from Paris on Monday. "Wikileaks 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."

The judge's ruling has galvanized Web sentiment in a way that Bank Julius Baer probably didn’t anticipate.

Although the domain name is disabled, an online movement has begun to publicize and link to the IP address directly, with more and more blogs and Web sites linking to 88.80.13.160, where Wikileaks' files can be found, hosted by a Stockholm, Sweden firm called PRQ Inet.

Somewhat ominously, but not necessarily connected, the hosting company was hit by a denial of service attack on Saturday, and a fire briefly took the servers offline.

The judge has scheduled more arguments on the issue for Feb. 29.

[kaiyo4u]

Not real cloak and dagger (at least what I have read so far). It is very nice though to be able to post something about someone or something that you "know" is illegal and not have to fear reprisal from those involved in our illegal activities.

If we can do jail time for lying to the "government", Why do our legislators get away with it?
We are the government aren''t we?

[gunownerdan]

"Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
-- President Harry S. Truman, August 8, 1950

"Today we need a nation of minute men; citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of American, cannot succeed with any lesser effort."
-- President John F. Kennedy, January 29, 1961

[shanev137]

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

[shanev137]

How Orwellian.

[michellem99-2009]

It has changed and really I have never heard that they have the power to tell us how to think..I am 53. Freedom to have yer say.. I can''t believe the press is told to write what the govt tell them to. We have a free press as that is what Ben Franklin set up when he founded it in America. Even the voting systems are rigged..I was appalled at that. America is going down the loo.

[brianbwb-2009]

Oops, meant support, my coffee hasn''t kicked in yet.

[brianbwb-2009]

"It will be interesting to find out who approved this clown as a federal judge." Posted by yongamerica

Judge Jeffrey White is, of course a Bush appointee, did you think any different?

[brianbwb-2009]

When visiting the site to express your dupport of freedom of speech, don''t forget to read some of the articles, especially the ones about Iraq, government misconduct, and corporate sleaze, then take whatever actions you deem appropriate to pressure your representative lawmakers to end such practices, and hold guilty parties fully and personally responsible.

Help wikileaks stand for something more than just your defiance of government gag orders.

[yongamerica]

What we have here is a failure to communicate.
By forcing US citizens to have passports to travel to Canada and Mexico, The Bush administration has affectively made every US citizen a prisoner in their own country.

Here again, by this "judge" who really knows better, has made another example of why neoconservatism is detrimental to the very foundations the US is based upon. It will be interesting to find out who approved this clown as a federal judge.

[pilgrimsway-2009]

There is someone bigger than Obama and Hillary? For information to be released on John Mcain and not Obama, on both of their affairs, it goes to prove there is a whole slanting being guided. I hope I am allowed to post this!