Talk:Wikileaks.org restored as injunction is lifted
OR Notes
editI received this Wikileaks press release by email
WikiLeaks.org is back. In a blow to Bank Julius Baer, Judge White has now denied the bank's request to silence WikiLeaks. Judge White also denied the bank's request to require that WikiLeaks remove the bank documents that had been reveal by Wikileaks to draw attention to alleged tax evasion and money laundering in the Cayman Islands.
In his order, Judge White on his earlier rulings, now having realized that those rulings trampled the First Amendment. WikiLeaks and its writers were ably represented by attorneys James Chadwick, Roger Myers, Guylyn Cummins and Joshua Koltun. The First Amendment was further represented by all of those entities that filed amicus briefs, including the the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press and eleven other media organizations, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, the California First Amendment Coalition and the Project on Government Oversight. We give thanks to these extraordinary efforts.
Louis Brandeis, one of the greatest Justices to ever sit on the United States Supreme Court, wrote that: "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." (Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It, 1933). Those words ring even truer today.
WikiLeaks shall not be cowed by those who would silence the truth. It will continue to be a forum for the citizens of the world to disclose issues of social, moral and ethical concern.
WikiLeaks encourages everyone who believes in shining that disinfecting sunlight on wrongdoing to support its mission:
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Donate
The case continues next month, although Baer has received a stern warning
from Justice White that it the case may be dismissed entirely.
DrgonFire1024 received this press release by email for use in an earlier article-
WIKILEAKS.ORG DELETED AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction
Contacts: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Contact
Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008
The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.
Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian hearing -- ordered to print blank pages -- 'wikileaks.org' name forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar -- the best justice Cayman Islands money launderers can buy?
When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks and published the secret Internet censorship lists of Thailand's military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the land of the brave, home of the free and a constitution which proudly states "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press", the power was forcibly turned off on the main Wikileaks press -- permanently:
BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island ORDER GRANTING
entity, PERMANENT INJUNCTION
WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
limited liability company; and DOES 1
through 10, inclusive,
[..]
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
[..] Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.
The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there were "serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands", "Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client's identity", "Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty" and that "These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The 'FATF') as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering". As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering "Countries of Primary Concern".
Wikileaks had previously exposed $4,500,000,000 worth of money laundering and tax evasion, including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian's front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).
On Monday June 15, 1971 the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg's leaked "Pentagon Papers" and was injuncted the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times' printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off the power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional some six weeks later in a 6-3 decision.
The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is certainly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.
The order was entirely written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion. The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island's operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on Wikileaks's California registrar Dynadot ("the power company"). The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.
Inorder to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.org.au (Australia) which remain active. Wikileaks certainly never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.
Wikileaks states the order is unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.
Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.
Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given notice "by email" hours before the case. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then "excused".
White signed the Cayman Islands bank censorship order without a single amendment.
The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.
WL
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man
http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven
I checked that Wikileaks.org had been restored.
If there is any more info that you would like to be added to the OR notes please contact me at my talk page.--Anonymous101 Talk 08:23, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
EFF press release
editElectronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
For Immediate Release: Friday, February 29, 2008
Contact:
Matt Zimmerman
Senior Staff Attorney Electronic Frontier Foundation
Judge Dissolves Wikileaks.org Injunction
First Amendment Rights of Internet Users Upheld in Today's Hearing
San Francisco - A federal district court judge in San Francisco today rescinded a controversial order that disabled the "wikileaks.org" domain name which had -- until two weeks ago -- pointed to Wikileaks, a website designed to give whistleblowers a forum for posting materials of public concern.
This week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) moved to intervene in the case, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California and the Project on Government Oversight (POGO). In a hearing in federal court today, EFF and its fellow intervenors and amici argued that the order infringed on the First Amendment rights of Internet users who have an interest in accessing material of public concern on the site. Ruling from the bench, Judge Jeffrey White cited concerns about the First Amendment, the effectiveness of disabling the wikileaks.org domain name, and the court's own jurisdiction over the case as reasons to dissolve his previous orders.
"We're very pleased that Judge White recognized the serious constitutional concerns raised by his earlier orders," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "Attempting to interfere with the operation of an entire website because you have a dispute over some of its content is never the right approach. Disabling access to an Internet domain in an effort to prevent the world from accessing a handful of widely-discussed documents is not only unconstitutional -- it simply won't work."
Wikileaks permits third parties to post corporate and government documents that they believe expose wrongdoing. For example, in the past year individuals have posted materials documenting alleged human rights abuses in China and political corruption in Kenya.
The lawsuit began earlier this month, when Swiss bank Julius Baer filed suit against Wikileaks for hosting allegedly leaked documents regarding personal banking transactions of Julius Baer customers. Also sued was Wikileaks' domain name registrar, Dynadot LLC. On February 15, following a stipulation between Julius Baer and Dynadot, the court issued a permanent injunction, disabling the wikileaks.org domain name and preventing that domain name from being transferred to any other registrar.
In addition to dissolving the permanent injunction, which permits the wikileaks.org domain name to be reactivated, the court also declined to extend a previous temporary restraining order requiring Wikileaks to disable access to 14 disputed Julius Baer documents.
Joining the EFF, ACLU, and POGO motion to intervene was Wikileaks user Jordan McCorkle. The papers were filed in consultation with and on behalf of the intervenors by Steven Mayer of the law firm of Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin. Other attorneys on the case include Christopher Kao and Shaudy Danaye-Elmi of Howard Rice; Zimmerman, Cindy Cohn, and Kurt Opsahl of EFF; and Aden Fine and Ann Brick of the ACLU and ACLU-Northern California, respectively.
For the full order: http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/baer_v_wikileaks/wikileaks102.pdf
For more on the Wikileaks case: http://www.eff.org/cases/bank-julius-baer-co-v-wikileaks
For this release: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/02/29
About EFF
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/
-end-
_______________________________________________ presslist mailing list https://falcon.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/presslist
Wikileaks 1st march release
editWikileaks working together with whistleblower Rudolf Elmer, the Declaration of Bern and the Swiss paper Tagesanzeiger have released subtantial new material on Bank Julius Baer including a 30 page analysis (available in English and German) disecting the internal tax avoidence operations of the whole Baer group.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer:_Grand_Larceny_via_Grand_Cayman
The Baer essentials, part 1 RUDOLF ELMER with ANDREAS MISSBACH (Bern. Decl., editor) & DANIEL SCHMITT (WikiLeaks, editor) Tuesday February 12, 2008 Contents [hide] 1 Letter from Rudolf Elmer 1.1 What is this about 1.1.1 Julius Baer Bank and Trust Co. Ltd, Cayman Islands 1.2 Violation of tax laws 1.3 Violation of matching maturities 1.3.1 URSA Ltd., Cayman Islands 1.3.2 Baer Select Management Ltd, Cayman Islands 1.4 The rip-off 1.4.1 Calculation of fees for both organizations 1.4.1.1 CreInvest, Zug, respectively Cayman: 1.4.1.2 shaPE, Zug/Freienbach, respectively Cayman: 1.4.2 Julius Baer Trust and Co Ltd. Cayman Islands 1.5 Calculation of Swiss tax losses due to activities of Bank Julius Baer on the Caymans 1.6 Handling of offshore constructs by the cantonal tax office of canton Zurich 1.7 Tax authorities are not allowed to use data 1.8 Responsibilities 1.9 Protection of the investor
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer:_Grand_Larceny_via_Grand_Cayman
another press release
editContacting representatives from people related to the court injunction
edit- Two people at EFF have been emailed to try and get a quote on how much of a PR disaster this has turned into for the bank. Mail available to accredited reporters via scoop: address. --Brian McNeil / talk 09:46, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- Brilliant! --Anonymous101 Talk 10:01, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
- I've contacted the ACLU (who supported Wikileaks) for their opinion on the lifting of the court injunction. --Anonymous101 Talk 09:57, 1 March 2008 (UTC)