Intellectual Property Law

Swiss Bank Drops WikiLeaks Case

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

Julius Baer Bank and Trust dropped its case Wednesday against WikiLeaks, days after a federal judge allowed the renegade, whistle-blowing site to resume operations.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White signed an order that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar. On Friday, after intense media scrutiny, the judge did an about-face, saying he went too far.

WikiLeaks, a whistle-blower site publishing thousands of leaked documents, was taken offline in the United States after posting allegedly stolen documents: individuals' banking records that suggest a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank was helping customers practice money laundering and tax evasion across the globe.

Dynadot -- WikiLeaks' U.S. hosting company and domain registrar based in San Mateo, California -- agreed to take down and lock the site at the behest of Julius Baer Bank and Trust. Judge White, appointed by the second President Bush, had originally signed off on the deal.

The bank, in a brief filing to Judge White, did not indicate a reason for "voluntarily" dismissing the case, but said it reserved the right to refile the lawsuit.

See Also:

• Judge Backtracks: WikiLeaks Resumes US Operations
• Is WikiLeaks Judge Having Second Thoughts?
• Groups Ask Judge to Reverse Order Shutting Down Wikileaks -- Updated
• Cayman Islands Bank Gets Wikileaks Taken Offline in US -- Updated ...
• WikiLeaks Posts More Prison Docs -- This One from Iraq Prison
• Wikileaks spilled
• Another Sensitive Guantanamo Manual Leaked Online
• Whistle Blowing Wiki Site Mysteriously Unresponsive

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 05, 2008 (boomark / email).