Update: Rights groups seek court OK to intervene in Wikileaks case
Shutdown of whistle-blower site violates First Amendment, they say
By Jaikumar Vijayan
from Computerworld
February 28, 2008
A growing number of privacy and civil rights advocates are calling on a federal court to reconsider its decision two weeks ago ordering the controversial Wikileaks.org whistle-blower Web site to be disabled...
"The First Amendment encompasses the right to receive information and ideas," the groups said in the brief. "The documents and materials posted on the Wikileaks website concern matters of great public interest" that each of the parties filing the motion had regularly accessed, they said.
Expressing similar support was Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society's Citizen Media Law Project (CMLP). Yesterday, the center filed a brief opposing the court's injunctions against Wikileaks and its domain registrar Dynadot LLC...
"Under established First Amendment law, prior restraints, if constitutional at all, are permissible only in the most extraordinary circumstances," David Ardia, director of the CMLP, said in a statement. "In this case, you have court orders that effectively shut down a website that has been at the forefront of exposing corruption in governments and corporations around the world."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=government&articleId=9065399&taxonomyId=13&intsrc=kc_top
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