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Home > The Secrecy File > Archives > 2008 > February > 18
Monday, February 18, 2008
Wikileaks in trouble for leaking
A California judge has ordered the popular whistle-blower website Wikileaks.org to shut down after it posted hundreds of internal documents alleging that a Swiss bank engaged in questionable off-shore activities in the Cayman Islands.
The documents, posted by a whistleblower with the Swiss banking group Julius Baer & Co., allege that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion schemes.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled in favor of Julius Baer on Friday, saying the company would face “immediate harm” in the absence of such “injunctive relief.”
White ordered Dynadot, a California-based company that registered the Wikileaks site, to “immediately lock the wikileaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar, and shall immediately disable the wikileaks.org domain name and account to prevent access to and any changes from being made to the domain name and account information, until further order of this Court.”
Wikileaks, founded two years ago as a central clearing house for whistleblowers, claimed in an interview with the BBC that the order was “unconstitutional” and said that the site had been “forcibly censored.”
Julius Baer asked for the documents to be removed out of concern that it could impact a separate legal case in Switzerland.
Here’s some more from the ruling:
Dynadot shall immediately disable the wikileaks.org domain name and account such that the optional privacy who-is service for the domain name and account remains turned off, until further order of this Court.
Dynadot shall preserve a true and correct copy of both current and any and all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account.
Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.
Dynadot shall immediately produce both current and any all prior or previous administrative and account records and data for the wikileaks.org domain name and account, including, but not limited to, all data for the registrant; billing, technical and administrative contacts; all account and payment records and associated data; and IP addresses and associated data used by any person, other than Dynadot, who accessed the account for the domain name, to the extent such information is maintained by Dynadot.
Plaintiffs shall immediately upon entry of this order file a dismissal with prejudice in favor of Dynadot. Notwithstanding the foregoing, plaintiffs and Dynadot stipulate and agree that the Court shall retain jurisdiction to enforce this order.