Federal judge in S.F. orders shutdown of whistleblower Web site

A San Francisco federal judge has taken the highly unusual step of ordering the shutdown of a Web site devoted to anonymous allegations of high-level wrongdoing after it posted documents purporting to describe offshore activities of a Swiss bank.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White issued an injunction Friday ordering a Bay Area Internet host to disable the Wikileaks.org site and prevent the organization from transferring to any other server until further notice.

Wikileaks, founded in 2006, describes itself as an enabler of "principled leaking" by government and corporate insiders. Its site was the first to post the confidential Defense Department manual about operations of the U.S. detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, and has also posted rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Despite the order aimed at its domain name, Wikileaks remained accessible Tuesday through its Internet Protocol or IP address, http://88.80.13.160, and through so-called mirror sites in Europe that replicate its contents.

In a news release, the organization called White's order "clearly unconstitutional" and promised to "step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices."

In the San Francisco case, the bank, Julius Baer & Co., requested the shutdown order Feb. 7, saying Wikileaks had wrongfully obtained hundreds of confidential bank documents, some of them altered or forged. Baer indicated that it wanted the site closed until the host, a San Mateo firm called Dynadot, removed all bank-related documents and made sure no others were posted.

White, Jeffrey Steven

Born 1945 in New York, NY

Federal Judicial Service:
Judge, U. S. District Court, Northern District of California
Nominated by George W. Bush on July 25, 2002, to a seat vacated by Charles E. Legge; Confirmed by the Senate on November 14, 2002, and received commission on November 15, 2002.

Education:
Queens College of City University of New York, B.A., 1967

State University of New York, J.D., 1970

Professional Career:
Attorney, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 1970-1971
Assistant U.S. attorney, District of Maryland, 1971-1977
Attorney, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 1977-1978
Private practice, San Francisco, California, 1978-2002

Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male

JOURNALIST WHO EXPOSES U.N. CORRUPTION YANKED BY GOOGLE

NEW YORK — How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet giant Google?

If you’re journalist Matthew Lee, all it takes are some critical articles and a scrappy little Web site.

Lee is the editor-in-chief, Webmaster and pretty much the only reporter for Inner City Press, a pint-sized Internet news operation that’s taken on Goliath-sized entities like Citigroup since 1987.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331106,00.html

He actually only ordered the domain registar to empty the record and lock it. It has nothing to do with the site or its data.

The Swiss/Caymen bank is going to have to play whack-a-mole to attempt to get to the main site and on the mirrors, and it probably won't work.

Work in the technical community is that the registrar is losing a massive amount of accounts over this. They agreed to the order ahead of time to get them off the hook from being sued and are using the court order to dodge a breach of contract charge

No recent Supreme Court case better illustrates the potential conflict between the imperatives of press freedom and national security than that of the Pentagon Papers.

In 1971, the Pentagon Papers — the Defense Department’s top-secret study of the growth of United States military involvement in Vietnam — were leaked by a government official to The New York Times. On June 13 of that year, the newspaper began publishing articles based on the documents. When the government learned of this, the Department of Justice asked for a temporary restraining order, which was granted.

In its petition to the court, the executive branch of the government asserted that it should be the sole judge of national security needs and should be granted a court order to enforce that viewpoint. The newspaper countered that this would violate First Amendment press freedoms provided for under the U.S. Constitution. It also argued that the real government motive was political censorship rather than protection of national security.

On June 30, the Supreme Court — in New York Times v. the United States — ruled in favor of the newspaper, and the documents were subsequently published. The Constitution, the justices asserted, has a “heavy presumption,” in favor of press freedom. The Court left open the possibility that dire consequences could result from publication of classified documents by newspapers, but said that the government had failed to prove that result in this instance.

That was the same court and invented the ‘right of privacy’ in an effort to create a Constitution basis for legalizing abortion.

If the rights of the media trump all other interests, then there is no reason to have: 1. Classified documents, 2. Covert Agents, 3. Executive Privilege, 4. Priest/Penitent, Attorney/Client or Doctor/Patient privilege, 5. Trade Secrets, 6. Pornography or Community Standards laws or the entire Fourth Amendment. Cuz I’m pretty sure that when a newspaper wants to publish something, they do not believe that the harm they may cause is larger than the benefit the newspaper will get from publishing it.

The Supreme Court decision in the case of the Pentagon Papers was a travesty. Nixon was so incredibly hated that the Supreme Court decided they needed to set aside the ACTUAL constitution and simply determine what public policy was ‘in the best interests of the public’ just like they late did in Roe.

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