U.S. Court Shuts Down Whistleblower Site
By Paul Kiel - February 18, 2008, 1:54PM
From the BBC:
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 wikileak from its servers.
Wikileaks has been the source for a number of revelatory documents, including the U.S. military's manual for Gitmo and the rules of engagement for U.S. troops in Iraq.
But see it for yourself, wikileaks.org is indeed out of commission. The Belgian wikileaks, however, is still up.
As for why this California judge ordered the whole site taken down over a few documents, that's not clear. As the BBC reports,
"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." Why didn't the judge just order the documents taken down instead of the whole site? We hope to get some expert guidance on the question.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/02/us_court_shuts_down_whistleblo.php