It was like in a proverbial journalistic 'big break' that saw Wikileaks catapulted into a meaty force to be reckoned with when it published a Swiss bank's internal documents evidencing money laundering practices. The bank took Wikileaks to court.
What followed was a rollercoaster of events. The incriminating documents suggested that Julius Baer had been laundering money on behalf of clients using a facility in the Cayman Islands, but the bank said they were forgeries. And the Californian court ordered the suspension of Wikileaks on 15 February.
Earlier this week US district judge Jeffrey White reversed that order, saying that the suspension raised "serious questions of prior restraint (on speech) and possible violations of the First Amendment."
Everybody seems to agree that this is a victory for free speech. Not least Wikileaks itself. The company is completely back on swing again. But what else is to come of it -after all, Baer argued that the documents were a fake- nobody really has a precise insight.
Julius Baer & Co's response has been to put out an official statement claiming that ‘the leaking of documents harmed privacy rights’.
It will be interesting to see whether this is the last of it. Judge White said that the genie is out of the bottle anyways. Wikileaks’ mirror sites domiciled in non US countries kept on running. During the time that Wikileaks was offline, the (highly exciting) documents were stored in a 'safe' on
Cryptome.
Wonder how Wikileaks got the scoop? Due diligence journalist style! It simply kept hot on the tracks of the dirt uncovered bit by bit in various newspaper articles over the past few years. Wikileaks has also blown the whistle in headline generating reports about Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.
bio: Angelique van Engelen writes
reporTwitters.com, a blog about Twittering reporters.
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