Wikileaks Shut Down by U.S. Court

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Wikileaks was started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, “an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. ” Of course, that only works if the site is reachable.

A California court ordered the domain name registrat Dynadot to erase all DNS entries for the domain. Without those DNS entries, the site is still there, but you can’t get to it.

What caused this decision?

The case was brought against Wikileaks by lawyers representing the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. A number of documents were posted on Wikileaks that allegedly disclosed that the bank was connected to money laundering and tax evasion. Julius Baer requested the documents to be taken down because they could affect the outcome of a separate legal case in Switzerland.

The documents were allegedly posted by Rudolf Elmer, former vice president of the bank’s Cayman Island’s operation. The Cayman Islands and money laundering? Who woulda thunk?

Wikileaks wasn’t about to remove the docs of their own accord, so here we are.

The hearing apparently took place last Friday, and Wikileaks says it was not represented at the hearing because it was “given only hours notice” via e-mail.

Of course, the site itself isn’t down; if you know the IP address you can still access the site. Versions from other countries can still be accessed, as well. Here’s the Wikileaks’ press release about the issue through the Christmas Island country domain.

Of course, in trying to stifle Wikileaks, they’ve opened up the floodgates for others to step in. For example, Cryptome has a ton of the Wikileaks documents mirrored, including the Julius Baer ones.

I’m not surprised something like this happened; I actually expected political forces to shut down the site some day, not a corporation. Oh, if you happen to want to know the judge’s name in the case: Jeffrey White. Wikileaks notes he is a Bush appointee.

Undoubtedly more to come.