SAN FRANCISCO -- — Saying he may have violated free speech rights, a federal judge reversed field Friday and lifted an injunction that had effectively shut down a website that publishes documents alleging corporate and government misdeeds.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled in response to a flurry of motions filed by a coalition of media and public interest organizations that urged him to reconsider orders he issued in mid-February against Wikileaks.org and Dynadot of San Mateo, Wikileaks' domain name registrar.
The judge acknowledged in court Friday that there were serious questions about whether his original order represented a "possible violation of the 1st Amendment." White said he was making no definitive finding on that issue now.
Later in the day, the judge issued a formal written ruling, stating that the groups had raised many issues that were not considered at the original hearing. He also said the injunction had triggered "exactly the opposite effect" of that intended: generating mirror sites duplicating Wikileaks' content and fanning media interest that only "increased public attention to the fact that such information was readily available online."
"This was a home run for the 1st Amendment," said Matt Zimmerman, attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil rights group focused on Internet liberties. "The judge understood the serious 1st Amendment concerns and recognized the reality that in dealing with the Internet, it's difficult for him to do anything of consequence."
William Briggs, attorney for the Zurich-based bank, Julius Baer & Co., that sought the injunction, said he was troubled by the judge's action.
"It's a shame the judge abdicated judicial authority to the Internet," Briggs said. "This bodes ill for the American public [because] things they consider to be private are now free rein if anyone on the Internet gets ahold of them."
White originally acted in mid-February in response to Julius Baer's lawsuit alleging that a disgruntled ex-employee had posted, on the Wikileaks site, internal documents alleging money-laundering and tax evasion schemes at the bank's Cayman Islands branch. The former Julius Baer employee was not named as a defendant in this suit. He was detained briefly in Switzerland in 2005 but never charged with a crime.
