Website Shutdown Sparks First Amendment Concerns
Federal judge ordered disabling of Wikileaks.org.
By: Sherri L. Shaulis
Posted: 02/21/2008
SAN
FRANCISCO - The shutdown of a website that publishes anonymous
whistleblower documents was ordered last week by a federal judge in San Francisco, a move
legal experts say raises First Amendment concerns.
The site, Wikileaks.org,
allowed users to post confidential material in an effort to discourage what it
called "unethical behavior" by corporations and government agencies. Items
posted on the site prior to its Feb. 15 disabling included documents showing
the rules of engagement for American troops in Iraq and a military manual for
the operation of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
"I think we are seeing the limits of a
jurisdiction-based judicial system as it faces a relatively borderless
Internet," David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project, told The
Christian Science Monitor.
Julius Baer Bank, based in the Cayman
Islands, sought an injunction against Dynadot, the domain
registrar for the site, claiming a disgruntled former employee had launched a "harassment
and terror campaign" that included posting stolen documents from the bank. The motion
said the documents were posted in violation of a confidentiality agreement and
banking laws.
According to Wikileaks, the documents "allegedly reveal
secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and
tax evasion."
Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White granted a
permanent injunction, ordering Dynadot to disable to site and preventing the
organization from transferring the name to another register.
Ardia told The
Christian Science Monitor that the court orders are stunningly broad and
suggest a lack of seriousness about the First Amendment. Rather than addressing
just the handful of bank documents brought up by the case, White tried to shut
down the entire Wikileaks site, which claims to have received more than 1.2
million documents "from dissident communities and anonymous sources."
In a statement on its site, Wikileaks compared White's
orders to ones eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Pentagon
Papers case in 1971. In that case, the federal government sought to forbid The New York Times and The Washington Post's publication of a
secret history of the Vietnam War.
"The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing The Times' printers to print blank pages
and its power company to turn off press power," Wikileaks said, referring to
the order that sought to disable the entire site.
Ardia said White's order to disable the entire site "is
clearly not constitutional."
"There is no justification under the First Amendment for
shutting down an entire website," he said.
Wikileaks said it was founded by dissidents in China and journalists, mathematicians and
computer specialists in the United States,
Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.
