Collapsed UK Bank Attempts to Censor Wikileaks

James Hardine writes "Wikileaks has released a couple of hilarious legal demands over a confidential briefing memo entitled Project Wing — Northern Rock Executive Summary. Northern Rock Bank (UK) collapsed spectacularly late last year on the back of the sub-prime lending crisis and was re-floated by the Bank of England at a cost of over £24bn. The memo was used by the Financial Times, the Telegraph and others. It attracted a number of censorship injunctions, as reported by the Guardian, which only Wikileaks continues to withstand. In their legal demand to Wikileaks, Northern Rock's well-known media lawyers, Schillings, invoke the DMCA & WIPO, claim it'll be 10 years in prison for Wikileaks operators for not following the UK injunction, but then, incredibly, refuse to hand over a copy of the order unless Wikileaks' London lawyers promise not to give it to Wikileaks. Finally they claim copyright and more — on their demands! The letters raise a serious issue about the climate of censorship in the UK, where one can apparently easily obtain a censorship order — a judge made law — that everyone is meant to obey, but no one is meant to know."

Comments

Re:It's obvious.

[intnsred]

What's obvious is that this issue is not about censorship per se -- it's about the move to fascism. Corporations rule. Here in the US, corporations often literally write the bills that the corporate-funded Congress then pass into law. This UK innovation just has the courts directly acting on the corporations' behalf.

"Fascism could better be called 'corporatism', for it is merely the merging of state power with corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator who "invented" fascism.

"I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country." -- Thomas Jefferson

Re:Collapsed?

[bri2000]

If you consider having to get an emergency government loan of £24 billion in order to maintain solvency in the face of depositors withdrawing their money, together with a government guarantee worth £30 billion or so in order to allow you to access the wholesale money markets, trading normally then that's right. It's more accurate, I think, to say that Northern Rock's business model of borrowing short (by issuing short term paper secured on their mortgage portfolio) to lend long collapsed following the flight from mortgaged backed securities in August/September. There may be a legitimate debate to be had over whether or not Northern Rock's mortgage assets are really as valueless as the markets think - the UK government certainly seems to think not but I'm not sure that's a punt I want them taking with my taxes.

Re:It's obvious.

[giulioo]

Note that in Italian the term "corporazioni" (ie: corporations) has a complete different meaning than the English one.
The term "Corporazioni", especially in the Mussolini context, refers to "associations" of people/companies doing the same kind of work.

It would be like

        Associations of car makers
        Associations of car makers' employees
        Associations of lawyers ...

Re:As someone who lives in the UK..

[owlnation]

.. I never realised until recently with the whole NHS thing on the news that we even had laws that tried to silence people.

Yes. It's true, and this isn't new. In the UK you categorically DO NOT have the right to freedom of speech. You have never had the right to free speech.

(actually in most of the EU it's the same - e.g. in Germany, Nazi related things are illegal -- um, ironically...) In the UK this has most often been used in relation to the IRA, e.g. internment in the early 70's, or the forbidding of Sinn Fein to speak publicly in the early eighties -- which resulted in the BBC using actors to relay their words. Actually, it's very, very interesting that the BBC were keen on free speech in the Eighties, but are no longer so bothered about it.

Nor, incidentally, do you truly have the right to remain silent. That was removed a few years ago as well. You silence can be construed as admission of guilt -- no pleading the fifth.

It really is time that the UK people realised that Big Brother is here, today, right now. The UK is not as free as some dictatorships in the World. Democracy is smoke and mirrors here, nothing more. It probably is already too late. Americans, you need to ensure you have a change in your Government. Do not repeat the UK's mistakes.

Re:That may be a good thing

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is basically caused by a wunch of bankers who loaned money they did not have to people who cannot afford to repay it.

That's what the sub-prime crisis is all about, yes. But Northern Rock's problem was not primarily that they did not have the money, but rather that they did not have the liquidity and were caught off guard. Also, while NR did lend in some dubious ways (another reply to my previous post noted some particularly daft examples), so did almost everyone else in recent years, and Rock are reportedly much less exposed in this way than much of the competition.