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''Bank Julius Baer & Co. v. WikiLeaks'', 535 F. Supp. 2d 980 (N.D. Cal. 2008), was a lawsuit filed by Bank Julius Baer against the website
WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...
. In early February 2008, Judge
Jeffrey White Jeffrey Steven White (born September 2, 1945) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Early life, education, and career Born in New York City, New York, White received ...
of the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California The United States District Court for the Northern District of California (in case citations, N.D. Cal.) is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises the following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, De ...
forced Dynadot, the
domain registrar A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registra ...
of wikileaks.org, to disassociate the site's
domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
records with its servers, preventing use of the domain name to reach the site. Initially, the bank only wanted the documents to be removed (WikiLeaks had failed to name a contact person). The judge's actions roused media and cyber-liberties groups to defend WikiLeaks' rights under the
First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...
and brought renewed scrutiny to the documents the bank hoped to shield. The judge lifted the injunction and the bank dropped the case on 5 March 2008.


Background

In 2002, the bank learned that records pertaining to the arrangement of anonymizing trusts in the
Cayman Islands The Cayman Islands () is a self-governing British Overseas Territory—the largest by population in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, which are located to the ...
for clients from 1997 to 2002 had been leaked. They interviewed the local employees with a
polygraph A polygraph, often incorrectly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked ...
as per company policy. The bank was unsatisfied with the answers of Cayman unit COO
Rudolf Elmer Rudolf Elmer (born 1 November 1955) is a Swiss private banker, whistleblower, and activist. He worked as a banker at Julius Bär from the 1980s to his dismissal in 2002. At this time, he was head of the bank's Caribbean operations for eight years. ...
, and terminated his employment. In June 2005, the leak was reported by the Swiss financial weekly ''Cash'' and ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'', though details of individual accounts were not reported on. In December 2007, Elmer released documents to WikiLeaks regarding surveillance of him and his family. The next month, some of the leaked account data began appearing on WikiLeaks. Contributors to WikiLeaks allege that these provide evidence of asset hiding,
money laundering Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money, obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source. It is a crime in many jurisdicti ...
and
tax evasion Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the tax ...
. Ten account holders in the United States, Spain, Peru, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, and Switzerland have been identified so far on WikiLeaks. According to Daniel Schmitt's analysis for WikiLeaks, leaked account data exists from after the date that Elmer left the Caymans. On 16 January 2011, Elmer announced he would hand over offshore account details of 2,000 "high-net-worth individuals" to WikiLeaks. Then he would return to Switzerland from exile to face trial. Julius Baer says Elmer falsified the documents. The law firm representing Baer was Lavely and Singer. The law firm representing Baer works primarily in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. They applied for and got the injunction at a court in San Francisco - 450 miles (700 km) from Los Angeles. They claimed to be acting, in part, to protect Baer's customers from having information about the customers become public. But one of the documents filed in court by Lavely and Singer identified one of the customers of interest by name as well as giving his street address.


Legal action, injunction

In January, Bank Julius Baer began sending cease & desist letters to WikiLeaks and its
domain registrar A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registra ...
, Dynadot, for the wikileaks.org
domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As ...
, citing the
DMCA The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a 1998 United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or ...
. On 18 February 2008, Judge
Jeffrey White Jeffrey Steven White (born September 2, 1945) is a Senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Early life, education, and career Born in New York City, New York, White received ...
of the
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California The United States District Court for the Northern District of California (in case citations, N.D. Cal.) is the federal United States district court whose jurisdiction comprises the following counties of California: Alameda, Contra Costa, De ...
issued a permanent injunction against Dynadot forcing it to "lock the wikileaks.org domain name". Mirror sites were not affected. The text of the posted
injunction An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in p ...
stated that "immediate harm will result to Plaintiffs in the absence of injunctive relief", as is required for injunctions to be granted. The general assumption is that some leaked documents were alleged by the bank to be
libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defi ...
lous,
trade secrets Trade secrets are a type of intellectual property that includes formulas, practices, processes, designs, instruments, patterns, or compilations of information that have inherent economic value because they are not generally known or readily a ...
,
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
ed, or otherwise prohibited for distribution, in a manner that would cause harm to it. WikiLeaks had not sent a representative to the hearing at which the injunction was granted. According to an editorial on the WikiLeaks website, Julius Baer had some communication with WikiLeaks before going to court to get the injunction, but did not inform WikiLeaks in which city it would seek the injunction and did not present to the court these email communications. A coincidental fire at the hosting company used by WikiLeaks, PRQ, centered in a high power supply regulator serving the majority of the data center, shut down and destroyed some sections of the specific DNS and dedicated hosting server racks used by WikiLeaks the same week.


Reaction

The Julius Baer lawsuit drew a great deal more negative attention than would the leaks alone, due to the '' Streisand effect''. Julius Baer had already got an injunction against WikiLeaks, prohibiting WikiLeaks from circulating the documents that Julius Baer wanted to suppress, without attracting significant attention from news media. But then Julius Baer drew attention to itself by seeking and getting a second injunction imposing a measure that would suppress not only the information that Julius Baer considered embarrassing, but also the entire WikiLeaks website. The WikiLeaks website claims to have 1.2 million documents that users have posted anonymously that deserve public scrutiny. Only 14 of these documents were pertinent to the Julius Baer case. As well as backfiring in terms of the attention it attracted, the injunction could not be entirely effective in suppressing the website anyway in that the alternate WikiLeaks domains were unaffected, and WikiLeaks was still available directly by its IP address. To shut down these access methods, it would be necessary to pursue injunctions in the jurisdictions where they are registered, or where the servers reside, which are deliberately scattered to make this difficult.


Injunction lifted

After the injunction was initially granted, it was successfully challenged in a joint action by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...
(EFF),
American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
(ACLU),
Project on Government Oversight The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is a nonpartisan non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, that investigates and works to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and conflicts of interest in the U.S. federal government. According to its webs ...
(POGO), and Jordan McCorkle. A similar brief was filed by Public Citizen and
California First Amendment Coalition The First Amendment Coalition (FAC) is a nonprofit public interest organization committed to freedom of speech, more open and accountable government, and public participation in civic affairs. Founded in 1988, FAC's activities include "test case" ...
(CFAC). Another brief in support of WikiLeaks was filed by the
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., that provides pro bono legal services and resources to and on behalf of journalists. The organization pursues litigation, offers dire ...
(RCFP),
American Society of Newspaper Editors The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) was a membership organization for editors, producers or directors in charge of journalistic organizations or departments, deans or faculty at university journalism schools, and leaders and faculty of ...
(ASNE),
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
(AP), Citizen Media Law Project, E.W. Scripps Company, Gannett Company, Inc.,
Hearst Corporation Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, telev ...
, ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...
,''
National Newspaper Association The National Newspaper Association (NNA) is a Pensacola, FL based non-profit newspaper trade association founded in 1885. The organization has over 2,300 members, making it the largest newspaper trade association in the United States. The organiza ...
(NNA),
Radio-Television News Directors Association The Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA, pronounced the same as " rotunda"), formerly the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), is a United States-based membership organization of radio, television, and online news dire ...
(RTNDA), and
Society of Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...
(SPJ) which also provided some legal funding. Judge White dissolved the injunction on 29 February 2008, allowing WikiLeaks to reclaim its domain name. The bank dropped the case on 5 March 2008.


References


External links

* * Court docket for ''Bank Julius Baer & Co. v. WikiLeaks'', No. 3:08-cv-00824 is available fro
CourtListenerInternet Archive

''Bank Julius Baer & Co v. Wikileaks''
website from the
Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...
(EFF) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bank Julius Baer Vs. WikiLeaks Lawsuit 2008 in California 2008 in United States case law Internet censorship in the United States Legal cases involving WikiLeaks United States District Court for the Northern District of California cases