Free Newsletters
InfoWorld Daily

InfoWorld
Log-in | Register

Court orders whistle-blower site offline in U.S.

Whistle blowers in the U.S. will no longer be able to post corporate and government documents online anonymously at Wikileaks.org


A California district court has shut down a controversial Web site in the U.S. that allows whistle blowers to post corporate and government documents online anonymously.

A site known as Wikileaks.org has been taken offline in the U.S. due to a court order from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. However, the site remains online in other countries, including Belgium and Germany.

The order in the U.S. came after a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, earlier this month filed a complaint against the site and San Mateo, California-based Dynadot, Wikileaks' domain-name registry, for posting several hundred of the bank's documents.

Some of those documents allegedly reveal that Julius Baer was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.

The court ordered that "Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name," according to court documents. It also said that Dynadot should prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org Web site or any other Web site or server other than a blank park page until further notice.

A spokesman for Julius Baer could not be reached for comment Monday.

According to its Web site, the purpose of Wikileaks, founded in 2006, is to develop "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis."

Wikileaks has been plagued by controversy since its inception, coming under fire from institutions whose confidential documents have been posted on the site and from critics who have questioned the motives of the site's founders. Still, others have praised the site for supporting the free dissemination of information.

Wikileaks posted a press statement on its site about the U.S. order, calling it "clearly unconstitutional" and said it "exceeds its jurisdiction."


Talkback:

commentPost a Comment

 

MOST COMMENTS

 
 





FIVE WAYS TO REDUCE IT COSTS IN 2009
The demands on IT have never been greater, particularly in light of lower revenue and uncertain demand for the goods and services. There are many ways that IT can help organizations adjust to this new economic environment. Learn about five key technology trends that can immediately impact your organization's bottom line, and how to build a strategy to implement these technologies within your current budget. Sponsored by: Riverbed

»  Click here to view this Webcast
  Enterprise Data Security Solutions Guide
Data security used to be about outside threats. These days the biggest challenge for data-driven organizations is the management of secure information from the inside out. Data is available on laptops, your network and even USB devices, but not always secure. Read this Solutions Guide to learn the best ways to keep it safe. Sponsored by ISC2

»  Click here to download now

- Special Advertising Partners -
WHITE PAPERS
 

» Technology White Papers Library

Technology White Papers by Topic

Technology White Papers E-mail Alert

Find out when the latest white paper is available:
 
 
INFOWORLD MARKETPLACE
 
» BUY A LINK NOW
 
 

Video

 
 
 

Podcasts

 
IFW Daily 01/09/2009

Palm launches new smartphone and OS, Asustek sees slower demand for Eee...

 
 
 

Columnists

 
 
 

Resource Center


Ads by techwords beta  [See your link here]
 




Sponsored Technology Links

 
 
 HOME  NEWS  BLOGS  PODCASTS  VIDEOS  TECHNOLOGIES  TEST CENTER  EVENTS   About | Advertise | Awards | RSS | Contact Us 

Copyright © 2009, Reprints, Permissions, Licensing, IDG Network, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service.
All Rights reserved. InfoWorld is a leading publisher of technology information and product reviews on topics including viruses,
phishing, worms, firewalls, security, servers, storage, networking, wireless, databases, and web services.

CIO :: ComputerWorld :: CSO :: Demo :: GamePro :: Games.net :: IDG Connect :: IDG World Expo
Industry Standard :: IT World :: JavaWorld :: LinuxWorld :: MacUser :: Macworld :: Network World :: PC World :: Playlist
TecChannel :: TecCommunity