Julius Baer defends WikiLeaks.org Shutdown

Bank moves quickly to protect private documents.

Julius Baer, the financial giant that struck Wikileaks.org offline early last week, defended his actions in a press release [PDF] published today.

The bank said that the decision to implement a court order to remove Wikileaks.org Internet was after more than a month of failed talks with WikiLeaks, which attempts to discern the site and its operators “true identity failed.” Julius Baer and his advisers have failed to identify and recruit operators WikiLeaks in a dialogue in relation to the movement of illegal and theft of bank records falsified, “said the communiqué.

WikiLeaks specializes in the editing and analysis of secret documents leaked to him by anonymous individuals. Its main web presence, Wikileaks.org, has a large number of servers scattered around the world under various aliases, and prides itself on being “uncensorable.” The site came with Julius Baer hot water earlier this year when it published secret documents linking the Del bank in the Cayman Islands to the operations of money laundering, tax evasion and fraud, among other things.

On 15 February, a district court in California granted an injunction [PDF] against WikiLeaks ordered to cease operations and manage their host DynaDot LLC, the deletion of the domain name Wikileaks.org. The injunction as it is an unfair WikiLeaks said at the request of the audience that has been given little attention. At the time of this writing, WikiLeaks.org remains offline, the Web site of the coast of the backups, however, are still accessible.

WikiLeaks said that Julius Baer adds to the efforts of unconstitutional censorship and a violation of the first amendment rights of the site, claiming that the bank denies. “The documents [hosting WikiLeaks] are protected and prohibited from USA under the unauthorized publication, California and the banking and foreign consumer protection laws of privacy. Displacement of records banking confidential by anonymous sources considerably damaged the privacy rights of all individuals, “said the press release. “This issue has nothing to do with censorship or the First Amendment. Rather, the sole purpose Julius Baer has always been limited to the removal of these private and legally protected documents from the website.”

The case is currently under way, with several civil rights groups filing of motions to intervene.