RSSEFF, ACLU say Wikileaks shutdown harms First Amendment rights
By Ed Oswald | Published February 27, 2008, 4:38 PM
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed motions in a federal court in San Francisco to overturn a decision that disabled Wikileaks' primary domain name.
A permanent injunction was imposed which disabled wikileaks.org, and prevented its transfer to any other registrar. This followed a lawsuit by Swiss bank Julius Baer which accused the site of posting the personal transactions of its customers.
The groups said that the issue of an employee's violation of company confidentiality was a private one, and should not have warranted the full shutdown of Wikileaks.
In arguing the point, both groups brought up the site's history of exposing human rights abuses in China and political corruption in Kenya. The basic premise of the site is to allow third-parties to post documents which they believe expose wrongdoing.
Of Julius Baer's claims of wrongdoing, EFF senior attorney Matt Zimmerman had the following statement: "The First Amendment rights of readers who have a legitimate interest in the materials posted on the website simply cannot be treated as acceptable collateral damage to the bank's claims."
The EFF seemed to suggest that Wikileaks' host, Dynadot (who was also named in the original suit), had capitulated to the Swiss bank's demands in order to escape any legal claims.
In addition, the effort is getting support from traditional media -- many of which equate the order to shutting down a newspaper over a single controversial article.
The permanent injunction only affects Dynadot, while a temporary restraining order has been filed against Wikileaks on the specific documents. The judge in the matter has scheduled a hearing for Friday on whether to make the ban permanent.
It is likely that the issues presented by the EFF, ACLU and others will be brought up at that hearing. Users will still be able to access data, but only through the numerical IP address on on mirror sites.
Lawyers for Julius Baer say they intend to file responses to the groups motion shortly.
Not a problem,
Wikileaks is also available via http://wikileaks.be/
I mean, apparently the Swiss bankers know a lot about numbered accounts, but VERY little about how website mirrors work.... Oh, well, their loss, our gain :D
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|First Amendment aside, if they posted confidential information about me, I would sue. Whether it regards any possible wrong doing or not, it is still covered under invasion of privacy. How would you like someone to post your entire music and video collection, and all the software on your computer, on a web site because YOU MIGHT be pirating? If nothing else, if there is any kind of ongoing investigation, any leak of information can damage their case. Also, I would take any information on a public web-site like that as second-, third- or even fourth hand information. How do we know if the leaked information is accurate and hasn't been changed to make the people look bad? What guarantee is it that the info is accurate? Personally, I wouldn't trust any information posted on a site like that farther than I could throw my computer monitor.
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|A company (or government) should not have the same level of privacy say a person might. They should be transparent in their dealings. And if you are doing something illegal through a company you should not have an expectation of privacy there either. If someone broke into an individual's computer and took records I would agree. However, this is not the case. These are company records and thus the public has a right to know about their illegal actions. If the government is doing something illegal shouldn't they be leaked as well? Or do you claim they should have privacy and continue on spying on us without reason?
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|San Francisco U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White's permanent injunctions against the whistleblower website wikileaks.org does constitute an unlawful prior restraint violative of the First Amendment and is overbroad even factoring in arguable financial privacy considerations that the Swiss-based Julius Baer & Company has in safeguarding certain customer information. The entire site can't be shut down consonant with the significant societal and individual values in deterring corrupt behavior by exposing its perpetrators, shaming them and informing actual and potential victims. Judges, legislators and law enforcement should err on the side of allowing MORE SPEECH--NOT LESS--and if they are interested in protecting privacy (which is usually a smokescreen for self-protecting authoritarian censorship), the solution is to craft narrow orders but NEVER shut down an organ of investigation, opinion, and fact-gathering. NEVER
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