Wikileaks fights back

Wikileaks.org, the website that claims to blow the whistle on corporate and governmental fraud, is getting legal help to fight an attempt to keep it offline.

Groups concerned with freedom of speech and digital rights are to argue on behalf of Wikilieaks at a legal hearing scheduled for 29 February.

Wikileaks was forced offline following a US court order earlier this month. Dynadot, the web host server, pulled the whistle-blowing site from its server and locked the domain name, preventing it from being transferred to another server.

The order was sought by Swiss banking firm Julius Baer after internal documents were placed on Wikileaks.

Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are planning to "intervene" for Wikileaks at the continuation hearing, claiming that the court order raises "serious First Amendment concerns".

"Blocking access to the entire site in response to a few documents posted there completely disregards the public's right to know," said ACLU attorney Ann Brick.

The order compelled Dynadot, the company that hosts the site in the US, to remove all mentions of the site from its address book.

Internet users in the US would have to consult this address list to direct their browsers to Wikileaks.

A spokesperson for Swiss bank Julius Bare said the case has nothing to do with free speech, rather that the documents on Wikileaks could have impacted on a separate court case being heard in Switzerland.

However, the attempts to get the documents removed spurred activists to host the contentious documents on other sites. In total, 18 organisations have pledged support for Wikileaks in documents filed to the US court that will hear the legal arguments.

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