TOOLBOX: Wilileaks Offers Offshore Protection for Disclosure of Wrongdoing

Virtually unknown until the Swiss bank Julius Baer tried to censor it for publishing allegations of financial hanky-panky, a website called Wikileaks has catapulted to fame as a potential tool for journalists... and those who leak to them.

After an initial unsuccessful attempt Feb. 15, 2008, to shut the site down, a U.S. District Court in San Francisco reversed field - and soon the accused bank withdrew its indiscriminate request for prior restraint, not merely of publication of documents that seemed to prove its own wrongdoing, but of everything else published on the site.

The site uses a "wiki" model of collaborative publishing. But it claims it uses procedures they hope will make it "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis."

• Further Information.
• Previous Story: WatchDog of Jan. 10, 2008.