Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19cnd-wiki.html
February 19, 2008
Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut
By ADAM LIPTAK and BRAD STONE
In a move that legal experts said could present a major test of First Amendment rights in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday ordered the disabling of a Web site devoted to disclosing confidential information.
The site, Wikileaks.org, invites people to post leaked materials with the goal of discouraging “unethical behavior” by corporations and governments. It has posted documents concerning the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq, a military manual concerning the operation of prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and other evidence of what it has called corporate waste and wrongdoing.
The case in San Francisco was brought by a Cayman Islands bank, Julius Baer Bank and Trust. In court papers, the bank claimed that “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign” provided stolen documents to Wikileaks in violation of a confidentiality agreement and banking laws. According to Wikileaks, “the documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”
On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot of San Mateo, Calif., the site’s domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. The order had the effect of locking the front door to the Wikileaks.org site — a largely ineffectual action that kept back doors to the site, and several copies of it, available to sophisticated Web users who knew where to look.
Domain registrars like Dynadot, Register.com and GoDaddy.com provide domain names — the Web addresses users type into browsers — to Web site operators for a monthly fee. Judge White ordered Dynadot to disable the Wikileaks.org Web address and “lock” it to prevent the organization from transferring the name to another registrar.
The feebleness of the action suggests that the bank, and the judge, did not understand how the domain system works or how quickly Web communities will move to counter actions they see as hostile to free speech online.
The site itself could still be accessed at its Internet Protocol (IP) address (https://88.80.13.160/) — the unique number that specifies a Web site’s location on the Internet. Wikileaks also maintained “mirror sites,” which are copies of itself, usually to insure against outages and this kind of legal action. These sites were registered in countries like Belgium (https://wikileaks.be/), Germany (https://wikileaks.de), and the Christmas Islands (https://wikileaks.cx) through domain registrars other that Dynadot, and so were not affected by the injunction.
Fans of the site and its mission rushed to publicize those alternate addresses this week. They have also distributed copies of the sensitive bank information on their own sites and via peer-to-peer file sharing networks.
In a separate order, also issued on Friday, Judge White ordered Dynadot and Wikileaks to stop distributing the bank documents. The second order, which the judge called an amended temporary restraining order, did not refer to the permanent injunction but may have been an attempt to narrow it.
Lawyers for the bank and Dynadot did not respond to requests for comment. Judge White has scheduled a hearing in the case for Feb. 29.
In a statement on its site, Wikileaks compared Judge White’s orders to ones eventually overturned by the Unites States Supreme Court in the Pentagon Papers case in 1971. In that case, the federal government sought to enjoin publication of a secret history of the Vietnam War by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
“The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing The Times’s printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power,” the site said, referring to the order that sought to disable the entire site.
The site said it was founded by dissidents in China and journalists, mathematicians and computer specialists in the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa. Its goal, it said, is to develop “an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis.”
Judge White’s order disabling the entire site “is clearly not constitutional,” said David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School. “There is no justification under the First Amendment for shutting down an entire Web site.”
The narrower order, forbidding the dissemination of the disputed documents, is a more classic prior restraint on publication. Such orders are disfavored under the First Amendment and almost never survive appellate scrutiny.
Re: Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Zeno Swijtink:
Interesting that if you Google https://www.wikileaks.org/ and then click on "cached" you can still get some of the articles, though the links won't work.
That's a real assault on freedom of speech, but I read a letter from a military officer commenting on a procedural manual from Guantanamo that was posted there.
I wonder how much secrecy the military should be allowed to have?
-Jeff
Re: Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Braggi:
Interesting that if you Google
https://www.wikileaks.org/ and then click on "cached" you can still get some of the articles, though the links won't work.
That's a real assault on freedom of speech, but I read a letter from a military officer commenting on a procedural manual from Guantanamo that was posted there.
I wonder how much secrecy the military should be allowed to have?
-Jeff
The “mirror sites” are still up:
Belgium: https://wikileaks.be/
Germany: https://wikileaks.de/ (connects with Christmas Islands)
Christmas Islands: https://wikileaks.cx/
Re: Web Site That Posts Leaked Material Ordered Shut
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Braggi:
I wonder how much secrecy the military should be allowed to have?
-Jeff
The classic "state secret," and perhaps the only really legitimate use of secrecy in a democracy, is in military operations. Obviously, you don't tell the enemy where you plan to send your troops.
The procedures at Guantanamo are routines concerning the conduct of army business, intended for training the troops. This is an area which is clearly under the authority of Congress to legislate (read your Constitution!), which means it should be reviewed by ordinary citizens as part of our duty to be informed about national affairs, so that we can inform our represenatatives of their duty to legislate. The Army actually understands this, as the manual apparently wasn't even classified, although they weren't exactly publishing it widely.
As it turns out, the procedures they require in the manual are illegal; that is, they do not conform to the Geneva Conventions. Since the US is a signatory to the Conventions, it has the power of law--actually senior to any congressional legislation (again, read your Constitution). Which makes everyone in the military chain of command who composed, authorized, ordered or enforced these policies ... war criminals.
So, with that in mind... what was your question? Ah-- how much secrecy should the military be allowed to have? I'd say, as much as they can use responsibly. Which is to say, in this case, none. The alternative answer, I suppose, would be "as much as they need to continue committing crimes," and I'm sure there are plenty of "good Americans" who would subscribe to that standard. We fought World War II to protect the world against imperial governments that took people off to secret camps to abuse them. Looks like we lost.
Hummingbear
