Wikileaks domain name yanked in spat over leaked documents

A federal judge in California has pulled the plug on Wikileaks.org, a Web site that specializes in posting leaked documents often provided by whistleblowers.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White on Friday ordered that the domain name be disabled at the behest of a group of Swiss bankers who filed a lawsuit alleging that confidential information appeared on Wikileaks.org.

White's order to Dynadot, the registrar with which Wikileaks appears to have been associated, says:

Dynadot shall 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.

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.

In addition, White granted a restraining order against Wikileaks itself, saying the defendants were "enjoined from displaying, posting, publishing, distributing, linking to and/or otherwise providing any information" that the Bank Julius Baer considers to be confidential. The bank boasts that it is the "leading dedicated wealth manager in Switzerland."

If the first few weeks of this lawsuit are any indication -- it was filed on February 6 -- it could easily spiral out of control. The folks behind Wikileaks have chosen to remain anonymous, and have said in the past that they are developing "uncensorable" countermeasures to defend against legal attacks.

One countermeasure was registering the domain anonymously; it's now, however, listed as registered to a "John Shipton" in Nairobi. Another is using anonymous email addresses at hush.com. Yet another was trying to transfer the domain name away from Dynadot (which does not seem to have been done in time). For more, here's an excerpt from a legal brief that the bank filed last week:

In order to hide their location, the Wikileaks Defendants use non-traceable "anonymous" e-mail addresses and operate a Website for the express stated purpose of providing "uncensorable," "simple and straightforward means for anonymous" and "untraceable mass document leaking," regardless of legality or authenticity. In fact, in self-response to a question they posted on their own Website, "Is Wikileaks concerned about any legal consequences?", they state that "... we are prepared, structurally and technically, to deal with all legal attacks..."

The long-standing Internet trick of mirroring is working, at least until Bank Julius Baer escalates the lawsuit by naming a whole slew of potential defendants. (Remember, in the DeCSS case, the DVD Copy Control Association sued 500 "John Does.")

The cryptome.org site, run by architect-turned-free-expression-activist John Young, has posted a 3MB Zip file of the Bank Julius Baer documents. They're on BitTorrent, of course, and some Wikileaks supporters are urging others to mirror or use the http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks numeric IP address instead.

Wikileaks' summary of the leaked documents centers on Rudolf Elmer, the former chief operating officer of Bank Julius Baer in the Cayman Islands. The summary alleges the bank supports "ultra-rich's (sic) offshore tax avoidance, tax evasion, asset hiding and money laundering." The bank has refused to comment.

Earlier, ah, leaks by the site have included an operations manual for the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and documents on Kenyan government corruption that were cited by the U.K. Guardian newspaper.

For now, the allegedly incriminating bank documents remain online, barring an escalation of legal activity by the bank's lawyers. In addition, Wikileaks seems to have prepared for this day by registering a slew of domain names (although the number of actual servers being used right now is far smaller):

http://wikileaks.cx/
http://wikileaks.be/
http://wikileaks.la/
http://wikileaks.de/
http://wikileaks.org.uk/
http://wikileaks.tl/
http://wikileaks.in/
http://wikileaks.info/
http://wikileaks.es/
http://wikileaks.ws/
https://secure.libertypen.org/wiki/Wikileaks

[alexgieg]

Censoring

There's an old meme in geek circles: "The Internet sees censorship as damage, and routes around it."

Time and again it's been proven true, and this episode is just another entry in the long list of useless attempts at reverting what cannot be reversed.

Once any piece of information is put on the 'Net, it becomes effectively eternal.

[inachu]

Overly acting judges

The only thing I could deem viable of removal is the judge himself.
There is nothing there that is deemed worthy of removal.

Freedom of speech and whistle blow protection is what this site has and needs.
Just because a few neocons in govt office do not like what is posted does not make it wrong.

[nuckelhedd]

Silly Declan

the (sic) that you use is short for Standard Industrial Classification. The usage you are looking for (all the time) is typed this way [sic] and should be italicised (which this prog [sic] doesn't support. As usual you are wrong wrong wrong. Please try to rise to a level where you are more than just a re-typist of crap.

[Pete Bardo]

R U Kidding?

I should have know better than to read a comment from a nuckelhedd [sic]. Gimme a brake, u can't even spel your own name.

Besides that (sic) is usually capitalized, and regardless of the fact that you knew what he meant-which is the point of communication, isn't it--that's the best you can do to poke at the author?

Get off your high horse for minute, then go get a life.

[bitjack]

Distribute them on Peer-to-Peer

These judges and government personel actually think that they can control information because they have all the guns and all the violence on their side.

Distribute the documents on peer-to-peer networks, and the law loses its power. While they can (because they have the infrastructure of violence via their police and armies) attack centralized targets, they cannot attack information that is thrown into the wind.

[ewoychowsky]

You can't stop the signal

Where's the crew of Serenity when you need them?

[eonodownload]

Then Comcast will block the BitTorrent traffic carrying the document .

Anyone else feel the walls closing in?

[Thomas, David]

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks

http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks

[Thomas, David]

The Judge

Seems to me the judge has a lot of questions to answer. Anyone
can review the material related to this issue.

[OwlCreekObserver]

I'm certainly no legal expert, but isn't THEFT the fundamental issue here? If I stole your credit cards and passed them along to my friends, all of us would be subject to arrest, right? How is stealing corporate information (or email belonging to a political candidate) any different?

It seems to me that there's a big difference between voicing one's opinion and stealing information.