Wikileaks, “an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis”, has been silenced by a U.S. court order. The organization has worked to provide an anonymous forum for anyone looking to expose unethical behavior in governments or corporations. Bank Julius Baer, which requested the order, seems to have gotten upset after being accused of laundering Kenyan corruption money by documents posted on wikileaks.org.

The order has caused the removal of the wikileaks.org URL from the DNS hosting records, resulting in “Server not found” messages for anyone attempting to visit the address. Luckily, the website’s IP address remains usable (http://88.80.13.160/), as well as a long list of public cover names. The main server is being bogged down by traffic (no press is bad press!), but some of the various cover URLs resolve to mirrors of the Wikileaks site.

That a Swedish bank and its subsidiary could reach into the United States to bring down this site’s domain name in such short time…it’s astounding. The harassment is bringing Wikileaks much deserved attention, but at too great a price. Hopefully the wikileaks.org URL will be reinstated. The site will do fine without it, but ethics and a true commitment to freedom of speech demand its return.

More on the court injunction is available at the site.

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