WEBSITE allowing people to leak sensitive information anonymously is back online after a US judge ruled that efforts to censor it violated rights to free speech.

Wikileaks was shut down last month after Swiss bank Julius Baer accused the whistleblower website of publishing confidential information about its customers.

The website has since gone back online after the decision was overturned by US District Court Judge Jeffrey White in a reversal of his earlier ruling.

"WikiLeaks.org is back. In a blow to Bank Julius Baer's censorship attempts, Judge White has now denied the bank's request to silence WikiLeaks," read a statement posted on the website.

"Judge White also denied the bank's request to require that WikiLeaks remove the bank documents that had been revealed by Wikileaks to draw attention to alleged tax evasion and money laundering in the Cayman Islands."

On February 15 Judge White ordered that the site's web address – wikileaks.org – be effectively removed from the internet. The ruling was not particularly effective, as the content on Wikileaks was quickly made available at other web addresses.

The decision sparked a debate about online freedom of speech and led to groups including the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation rallying behind the website.

Thousands of sensitive documents revealing corporate and government operations have been posted on Wikileaks since it began in late 2006. The website claims to have 1.2 million documents in its database.

Julius Baer went after Wikileaks in court after the website posted copies of internal documents that indicated the company helped its customers launder money illegally through the Cayman Islands.

The bank denied any such accusations and argued that Wikileaks was violating law by displaying its private paperwork online.

Judge White sided with the bank until a hearing last week where attorneys defending Wikileaks convinced him to lift his injunction in the name of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

With AFP
 

Links

Wikileaks – http://www.wikileaks.org/