It was the traditional journalist’s big break which catapulted the Wikileaks site from obscurity into a site to reckon with. The organization’s publication of a Swiss bank’s internal documents which evidenced nothing less than money laundering practices triggered a massive reaction worldwide.
Julius Baer, when it learnt about the Wikileaks documents about its practices in the offshore Cayman Islands, took the publisher to a Californian court and secured an injunction against the site on 15 February. A few days ago US district judge Jeffrey White reversed that order saying that the suspension raised “serious questions of prior restraint (on speech) and possible violations of the First Amendment.”
Everybody seems to agree that this is a victory for free speech. But what else is to come of it -after all, Baer argued in court that the documents were a fake- nobody really has a precise insight. Julius Baer & Co’s response has been to put out an official statement claiming that ‘the leaking of documents harmed privacy rights’.
It will be interesting to see whether this is the last of it. Judge White said that the genie is out of the bottle and that’s a pretty obvious statement. During the time that Wikileaks’ US sites were closed down, international mirror sites domiciled kept running. In the US, the (highly exciting) documents were stored in a, let’s say, ’safe’ on Cryptome.
Wikileaks as an organisation is highly useful to keep a track of because it publishes fresh materials on whistleblowing stories almost daily. For instance, today, the site published a leaked army document that outlines in great detail the US army’s plans until 2011. What’s more, you can chat with people online about the information that’s published. Check it out here. If you would like to find out the rules of leaking documents, check out these pages.