Saturday, March 1, 2008

Judge allows Wikileaks site to re-open

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
Fri Feb 29, 8:02 PM ET
A federal judge who shuttered the renegade Web site 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 was still not working.

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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