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Case Against Wikileaks Dropped

Julius Baer Bank and Trust dropped its case Wednesday against WikiLeaks, days after a federal judge allowed the renegade, whistle-blowing site to resume operations.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White signed an order that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar. On Friday, after intense media scrutiny, the judge did an about-face, saying he went too far.

Judge Realizes How Hard It Is To Censor The Internet And Recognize Jurisdiction

A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S. hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade's site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

...

Evan Spiegel, one of the banks two attorneys at the hearing, said the bank "wanted nothing more" than for WikiLeaks to take down the documents in question. "That's been the point of the bank all along," he said. He added that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not afford the right to publish private banking information.

...

Still, the judge cautioned that he is likely to toss the entire case. He said the American courts may not be the proper venue for a Swiss bank to sue the WikiLeaks.org domain name owner -- John Shipton, an Australian citizen living in Kenya.

Wikileaks Attacked From All Sides

The transparency group WikiLeaks.org currently seems to be under heavy fire. The main WikiLeaks.org DNS entry is unavailable, reportedly due to a restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands. The WikiLeaks whistle blower, allegedly former vice president of the Cayman Islands branch of swiss bank Julius Baer, states in the WikiLeaks documents that the bank supported tax evasion and money laundering by its clients from around the world. WikiLeaks alternate names remained available until Saturday, when there seems to have been a heavy DDoS attack and a fire at the ISP. The documents in question are still available on other WikiLeaks sites, such as wikileaks.be, and are also mirrored on Cryptome. Details of the court documents have also been made available.

You know when you get a restraining order, a DDoS and a freak fire at your ISP, that you're pissing someone off. The only thing you're missing is a ship's anchor cutting your connectivity.

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