Wikileaks Judge Realizes Error

When I first reported on this, it had only shown up in The Guardian, but now it's all over the mainstream press, so following up seems a bit pointless, but I'll should wrap it up here anyway.

Judge Jeffrey White may not have understood the consequences of what he was doing at the time, but he was not oblivious to the press coverage nor, fortunately, the constitutional questions that were raised; you can't go around shutting down publishers just because they published information that they (possibly) shouldn't have.

"There are serious questions of prior restraint and possible violations of the First Amendment," White ruled from the bench in his San Francisco courtroom. - Reuters via New York Times.

The case had rapidly escalated, with serious questions raised about whether Wikileaks had sufficient notice, whether Baer was being fully forthcoming about the situation, and even whether the Court had jurisdiction. In addition, by the time the judge decided to hold a hearing on the matter, the big guns were out in strength, with Public Citizen, the California First Amendment Coalition, ACLU, Project on Government Oversight and the EFF all weighing in.

One thing is very clear; if Baer wanted to keep their documents secret, they seriously miscalculated. Pre-blogging days you might have been able to stifle a source and assume that the complaints (if any) would come long after you stopped caring (the company is preparing a public stock offering). Instead, they saw the entire process play out in less than ten days. And those documents they wanted out of the public eye? They've been read, seen or at least heard of by hundreds of thousands of people who had never even heard of a banking group called "Julius Baer." True or not, the company's name is now indelibly associated with Cayman Islands money laundering.

But I'm sure Wikileaks appreciates the publicity.