Free-speech and privacy advocates are up in arms after a U.S. judge shut down Wikileaks.org. The Web site that let whistle-blowers publish sensitive information launched last December and had more than 1.2 million documents posted anonymously.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in California ordered the injunction at the behest of a Swiss bank and its Cayman Islands subsidiary, according to court documents. Julius Baer & Co. Ltd. and its subsidiary, Julius Baer Bank & Trust, said "immediate harm will result to (the bank) in the absence of injunctive relief."
"We are in the Internet Never-Never-Land of the First Amendment," said Reuben Guttman, an attorney in the Washington, D.C., office of Grant & Eisenhofer P.A. "You've got First Amendment issues at stake. You've got basic injunction-law issues at stake. And you've got the whole issue of whistle-blower protection."
Julius Baer's Beef
Wikileaks has exposed rewards and penalties at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, Yahoo's lawsuit over a Chinese dissident's jailing, a police raid on Bermuda Broadcasting, and thousands of other documents.
At the root of Julius Baer's complaint were documents related to its offshore activities. According to the court order, those documents had titles that included phrases like "tax avoidance," "offshore tax scheme," and "tax evasion."
