[governance] Whistle-blower site taken offline

[Riaz K Tayob]

Monday, 18 February 2008,

Whistle-blower site taken offline

The case was brought by lawyers working for a Swiss bank A controversial 
website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and 
corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a 
California court ruling, the site says.

The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents 
were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and 
India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken offline after the court ordered that 
Dynadot, which controls the site's domain name, should remove all traces 
of wikileaks from its servers.

The court also ordered that Dynadot should "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."

Other orders included that the domain name be locked "to prevent 
transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar" to prevent 
changes being made to the site.

Wikileaks claimed that the order was "unconstitutional" and said that 
the site had been "forcibly censored".

Web names

The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group 
Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which 
allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and 
tax evasion.

Wikileaks logo The site was founded in 2006

The documents were allegedly posted by Rudolf Elmer, former vice 
president of the bank's Cayman Island's operation.

A spokesperson for Julius Baer said he could not comment on the case 
because of "pending legal proceedings".

The BBC understands that Julius Baer asked for the documents to be 
removed because they could have an impact on a separate legal case 
ongoing in Switzerland.

The court hearing took place last week and Dynadot blocked access from 
Friday evening.

Wikileaks says it was not represented at the hearing because it was 
"given only hours notice" via e-mail.

A document signed by Judge Jeffery White, who presided over the case, 
ordered Dynadot to follow six court orders.

As well as removing all records of the site form its servers, the 
hosting and domain name firm was ordered to produce "all prior or 
previous administrative and account records and data for the 
wikileaks.org domain name and account".

The order also demanded that details of the site's registrant, contacts, 
payment records and "IP addresses and associated data used by any 
person...who accessed the account for the domain name" to be handed over.

Wikileaks allows users to post documents anonymously.

Information bank

The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians 
and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents.

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net with many 
commentators questioning the motives of the people behind the site.

It recently made available a confidential briefing document relating to 
the collapse of the UK's Northern Rock bank.

Lawyers working on behalf of the bank attempted to have the documents 
removed from the site. They can still be accessed.

Dynadot was contacted for this article but have so far not responded to 
requests for comment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7250916.stm
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