First Amendment

German intelligence authorities paid a reported $6.5 million for a list of bank deposits in Liechtenstein and expect to recoup a reported minimum $650 million in taxes—quite a return on investment!

Authorities in Britain, United States, Finland, Sweden, Norway and others have requested the German list—no word on whether German authorities are requiring other nations to "pass the hat"?

Hey, instead of giving Wikileaks an injunction how about a $25 million donation and some professional encryption algorithm consulting services—wonder what that ROI would be?

Don't forget Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands.

Res: UPDATED 02/27/2008 Google News, Wikileaks

Blog: POGO Seeks to Intervene on Behalf of Wikileaks

Web:

• UPDATED 02/29/2008 Google->TopTechNews, Judge Questions Request to Shut Down Wikileaks

  "Once information hits the Internet, it's gone, ... Judges simply lack the ability to solve the problems themselves with legal tools."--Eric Goldman, Director, Santa Clara University Law School's High-Tech Law Center--

• UPDATED 02/28/2008 Google->AP, Swiss Bank Defends Wikileaks Shutdown Contrary to Baer's public assertion, alleging that an Internet site contains a stolen document does not confer a right or relationship sufficient to shutdown down that site or any other Internet site displaying that allegedly stolen document.

  There are many problems with using "theft logic" in Internet leak cases—declaring the entire world criminals to retrieve or prevent leaked documents is not effective or attractive to most judges, even in the so called national security cases.

  This likely explains Baer's puzzling CIA like argument that their documents were both stolen and forged AND either stolen or forged.

  Significantly, with respect to WikiLeaks the documents are neither stolen nor forged!

• UPDATED 02/27/2008 Wired, Groups Ask Judge to Reverse Order Shutting Down Wikileaks -- Updated

  "One may well feel sorry for a small domain name seller that got caught up in a huge case. But one reason that Internet users go to companies like Dynadot is to preserve their privacy, and when that privacy gets challenged it would seem to be at least implicit in the mutual expectations of the parties to that relationship is that the registrar [or ISP] will not simply roll over,"--Paul Levy, Public Citizen--

• UPDATED 02/27/2008 LAT, Judge is asked to rescind shutdown of website
• UPDATED 02/27/2008 Slashdot, EFF, UCLA Back WikiLeaks
• UPDATED 02/27/2008 UKG, Major US groups file motion on behalf of Wikileaks users
• UPDATED 02/26/2008 AFP, German tax probe targets Swiss bank subsidiary: report
• Tax scandal spreads to Germany

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