Constitutional Law
Judge Shutters Whistle-Blower Site; Major 1st Amend. Issue
Posted Feb 19, 2008, 03:22 pm CST
By Martha Neil
In a move that could spark a major test of the scope of the First Amendment in the Internet era, a federal judge in San Francisco has closed down a website with a mission of providing a bulletin board for the posting of leaked material.
A permanent injunction (PDF posted by New York Times) granted Friday by District Judge Jeffrey S. White still leaves several "back doors" to the Wikileaks site open to sophisticated users. But the judge's order requiring the domain name registrar to disable the site's "front door" domain name could result in a major First Amendment challenge, according to the New York Times.
Disabling the entire site is “clearly not constitutional,” David Ardia, of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School, tells the newspaper. “There is no justification under the First Amendment for shutting down an entire website.”
The judge's order came in a case brought by a Cayman Islands bank which contends in court filings that stolen documents have been provided to Wikileaks by “a disgruntled ex-employee who has engaged in a harassment and terror campaign,” violating both a confidentiality agreement and banking law. The judge also ordered the domain registrar and Wikileaks to stop distributing the bank documents. Lawyers for both could not be reached by the newspaper for comment.
Meanwhile, in apparent reaction to the judge's move, other "fans of the site and its mission rushed to publicize" alternate addresses that can be used to access the Wikileaks site and have "also distributed copies of the sensitive bank information on their own sites and via peer-to-peer file sharing networks," the Times reports.
The article also says that "the feebleness of the action suggests that the bank, and the judge, did not understand how the domain system works or how quickly Web communities will move to counter actions they see as hostile to free speech online."
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Comments
Posted by Sean Heeger - 9 months, 1 week, 3 days, 10 hours, 39 minutes ago
This is exactly why judiciaries should be required to understand the Internet as a whole. Now as a result, the law had its ignorance preyed on and a damage has occured..
Posted by Tony - 9 months, 1 week, 1 day, 10 hours, 33 minutes ago
If someone abuses the privilege, there is a remedy. You can subpoena the site’s records and identify the person posting dafamatory or protected information and bring a suit. If the information is protected and purely commercial and publication is damaging to the business, you could probably have the site enjoined from posting it. But, bringing down the site is just stupid. (refer to the previous article about judges who flunked the cognitive tests).
Posted by prosecute1966 - 9 months, 1 week, 3 hours, 3 minutes ago
You know, I have never been a conspiracy theorist, nor have I ever been one to give credence to vast, complicated conspiracies, but this ruling gives me pause. It calls to mind that now familiar saying: “Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.“ “...and if they are out to get you, paranoia is just SMART THINKING.“