Judge allows Wikileaks site to re-open

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: David Bolduc [bolduc () austin rr com]
Sent: Saturday, March 01, 2008 11:17 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: Judge allows Wikileaks site to re-open

For IP, if you like, since the original story got dicussed at length ...

<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080301/ap_on_hi_te/wikileaks_shutdown>


Judge allows Wikileaks site to re-open

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

Fri Feb 29, 8:02 PM ET


SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge who shuttered the renegade Web site 
Wikileaks.org<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_hi_te/storytext/wikileaks_shutdown/26536063/SIG=10m1mh8la/*http://Wikileaks.org>
 reversed the decision Friday and allowed the site to re-open in the United States.

In mid-February, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White issued an injunction against Wikileaks after the Zurich-based 
Bank Julius Baer accused the site of posting sensitive account information stolen by a disgruntled former employee.

White set off storms of protest among free-speech advocates and news media organizations when he ordered the disabling 
of the entire site rather than issuing a narrowly tailored order to remove the bank's documents.

On Friday, the judge dropped the injunction that took the site offline, citing First Amendment concerns and questions 
about legal jurisdiction.

At a court hearing in San Francisco, White said he had "serious questions" about whether the legal measures sought by 
the bank "would be constitutionally approriate" and whether they constituted prior restraint by the government. He also 
cited "possible violations of the First Amendment."

In addition, White said he questioned the "effectiveness" of blocking the site, an apparent reference to the fact that 
other Web sites quickly obtained and disseminated the information about the bank.

The judge recognized that "the genie is out of the bottle," said Matt Zimmerman, senior staff attorney at the 
Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of several organizations that filed briefs on the case. The Associated Press and 
the ACLU were also among them.

"The reality of the Internet makes it difficult for him to issue an order that will have any impact, given the fact 
that all the material is already out there," Zimmerman said.

The bank sued Wikileaks and the San Mateo company Dynadot, which provided the Web site's U.S. domain name after client 
information was posted.

Dynadot agreed to shut down the Web site in exchange for the bank removing it from the lawsuit.

The Wikileaks site 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.

It wasn't clear whether the site would resume its operations. Hours after the judge ruled, 
Wikileaks.org<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_hi_te/storytext/wikileaks_shutdown/26536063/SIG=10m1mh8la/*http://Wikileaks.org>
 was still not working.

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