Update on Wikileaks

Just a quick update today. A federal judge in California has reversed his decision to restrict access to wikileaks.org. A Swiss bank that was caught up in some shady dealings is involved in a court case in California (even though the alleged dealings took place in the Cayman Islands, outside of U.S. jurisdiction.) Documents posted on the site detailed some of those dealings and were released by a former bank executive. The bank requested and got a ruling from the judge to block all public access to those leaked documents, even though they were already out there and available.

Here is a telling quote from the New York Times article.

In reversing himself at a hearing here on Friday, Judge White acknowledged that the bank’s request posed serious First Amendment questions and might constitute unjustified prior restraint. He also appeared visibly frustrated that technology might have outrun the law and that, as a result, the court might not be able to rein in information once it had been disclosed online.

Judge White ordered that the site shut down access to the site from its American portal. Too bad for the judge, the site is intentionally accessible from its many overseas sites. The whole point was to circumvent censorship efforts. Read all about it here.

It all seemed pretty pointless at the time. Kudos (I guess) to the judiciary for recognizing a pointless and potentially illegal ruling.

Chris

So that's what it sounds like

This is just a quick update to yesterday's post concerning the website wikileaks.

The site is back up and running. You can access it here now. It seems that they have numerous backup sites and the site is also accessible from foreign addresses such as wikileaks.de and wikileaks.be. As they point out, these backups are necessary to circumvent censorship efforts. They just really never expected to have to protect themselves from domestic censorship.

Happily, the site is planning to increase its activity in light of this intrusion on free speech. Kudos. The main story currently regards the bank records that led to the shutdown in the first place. Gee. I hope the damaging records don't get out now.

"The horse got out of the barn! Quick! Close the door so the horse doesn't get out!"

Much thanks to De Warf Rat and POAC for the info.

Chris

What's the sound of a whistle not blowing?

Yesterday, I ranted about the Executive Branch decision to shut down a website that provides easy access to all manner of economic data. Today, the good folks at Daily Kos brought us this little ray of sunshine from the Judicial Branch.

It seems that U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in California has ordered that Wikileaks be shut down. (The link is not intentionally broken; that is the message currently displayed.) According to the BBC, Swiss bank Julius Baer is in a tizzy because some information leaked on the site about the bank might reveal some shady dealings in the Cayman Islands. It seems the bank is in the middle of a court case right now.

Here is the official ruling:

"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."

I'm taking bets on when we hear a "further order" from the court. I'm taking 2182 AD. In the meantime, the site that claims to have leaked 1.2 million documents since 2006 has been entirely silenced over one court case and the documents in question are likely to be released in court sooner or later anyway.

Wikileaks was a powerful tool that allowed whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents. It had particularly irritated the governments of China and Thailand because the site allowed people to documents regarding non-spurious issues like human rights abuses and misinformation about the Iraq War.

I guess corporate interests trump human rights and transparency yet again.

Yesterday, I made the point that democracy requires open government. Daniel Ellsberg proved that in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers and Senator Mike Gavel read them into the Congressional Record, making them a public record. (A congressional committee later determined that only .5 percent of the 7000 pages were indeed "top secret." I will add an attribution later.) That information helped end the Vietnam War.

As Daily Kos' stephen soldz so eloquently points out, Nixon did not try to shut down the New York Times and Washington Post entirely for printing the Pentagon Papers. My own educated guess, though, is that Nixon would not have been too upset about that, but he could not find a judge to go along with him.

Whistle blowers are an integral part of any democracy. As a nation, we entrust our government to operate in our own best interests. With such a large government entrusted with so much power, there will be abuses of power. That's the sad reality. The silver lining is that there are ways, like "blowing the whistle," that uncover abuses of power and that is the first step toward correcting abuses. Our judiciary did no favors today for American democracy or for democratization efforts across the globe.

Keep digging into those government records.
Chris