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Bank Julius Baer Issues Statement On WikiLeaks
dtwood writes "The bank that got WikiLeaks.org erased from DNS finally hired a PR agency and issued a press release filled with half truths and non-statements. Tynan on Tech has it, along with some brief commentary. Worth a look."
Can someone please tell Mr Baer that anything he says will be used against him in the court of public opinion?
Sounds like his lawyers are getting nervous.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Are there any US institutions that are associated with this bank that I should be considering boycotting?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
"The posting of confidential bank records by anonymous sources significantly harms the privacy rights of all individuals." Especially individuals engaged in tax fraud.
Sigh.
I was hoping this story wouldn't get big. I was really hoping that I'd found a bank through which I could launder and stash various... shall we say... "unreported monies". Like a stack of $100 bills the size of a small room. Homeland Security can be really unforgiving about that sort of thing, you know?
I think any reasonable person knows what a half-statement. It's a completely legitimate. Most English professors.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
> If you're going to chide a company for putting out a shitty document, at least have the balls to use some real language when you do it.
> Is it a lie? then call it a lie! "half truths" my ass.
You mean like this?
Looks to me like the article accuses Bank Julius Baer of... lying.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Quote: "And the statement "Julius Baer's sole objective has always been limited to the removal of these private and legally protected documents from the website" means either that a) they're lying, b) they really did think that wiping WikiLeaks.org from the DNS records of the Net would only remove those 'inauthentic' documents they're so concerned about, or c) they're lying."
I'd interpret it as meaning they tried everything else and then had to resort to these means to get these documents offline. In a way, I can understand the Bank. If the documents are true, it's confidential information that shouldn't be published. If they're forged, it's obviously defamatory and shouldn't be published, either. I'm not sure if exposing some tax fraud is a goal high enough to disregard legal standards. WIkileaks is obviously doing good work, as with last years documents about african dictators. Not sure if this is among that good work,
Fleur de Sel
Erm, well, one of the things they say relates to the documents being "stolen and forged". Then, in the very same paragraph, they refer to the documents as "private" and "confidential".
... :-D
Sorry, but, um, forged documents aren't private or confidential unless they contain some degree of accurate information, I suppose...but then they're not subject to banking laws because they're fake documents, right?
So, which is it, Julius Baer? Are these documents forgeries, or are they real documents and therefore subject to banking privacy laws? You don't get to have your cake and eat it, too.
If JB lawyers really had the aim to stop the publication of the documents, they could have just sent WikiLeaks a C&D, who maybe would have even taken it down. But instead, they call up WikiLeaks asking them who their lawyer is and refuse to identify themselves. Who do these people think they are? The fscking Mafia? Wait, don't answer that
My blog
So, if the New York Times publishes a report on tax evasion, one should bulldoze the city of New York?
Pulling the DNS is an option to be done *when all others have been exhausted*, and fact is, this was the first option the courts pulled, which is akin to my above statement. An initial order had to be for Wikilinks to pull the documents off of the site by a set date, and if they didn't, hold the executives in contempt. That is how the rule of law works.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
actually, yes you can. the bank's efforts at defending itself are certainly vile, but this doesn't mean the leaker has virtuous motivations either. if you think it is impossible to leak and lie at the same time, you've never encountered a disgruntled ex-employee or ex-client before
it's sort of like some of the problems surrounding allegations of rape. most charges of rape are indeed cases about a real rape, that needs to be punished harshly. but a handful of charges of rape are made by women who's motivations are completely false. the horrible tragedy is that the real damage such women do is not to the man they want to hurt, but to the 100 other cases of genuine rape their false rape charges now put into doubt
so let us hope this wikileaks case does not involve a maliciously intended disgruntled ex-employee or ex-client. not that the bank's actions are defensible in any way, regardless of the leaker's motivations, but if the motivations of the leaker aren't squeeky clean, on such a high profile affair, then this entire wikileaks first amendment situation gets poisoned in a way it would be viewed on the street in a way no one who cares about the first amendment wants to see happen
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
a bag of walnuts!
On February 18, 2008, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a permanent injunction against Dynadot forcing it to "lock the wikileaks.org domain name
Whereas what wikileak did was to release the illegal activities of asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
So U.S. District Court, where is the justice?
1. According to the correspondence shown by wikileaks, Bear's lawyers did not attempt to discuss what they wanted. They only tried to contact them to serve legal papers. You'd be evasive too.
2. Bear is asserting that the documents are 1) fake, and 2) violations of banking privacy law. One of those two is the truth and the other is a lie. If they are fake, then there is no violation of banking privacy, so #2 is a lie. If they are real, #1 is a lie.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Also, it makes sense for a company not to comment on the authenticity of leaked documents - and the bank could argue that wikileaks should remove the documents if they are fake (assuming wikileaks purports to be a factual site); and should remove them if they are illegal; and therefore should remove the documents without the bank specifying if they are authentic or not.
That said, hosting fictional information probably isn't a crime (unless you could work slander or libel into it); and hosting private/secret documents against the rights holders' wishes is kind of wikileaks' raison d'etre.
Just my $0.02
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
They tried to serve Wikileaks with a notice [...] pulling the DNS was about all they had available to them.
That's bullshit. Over the years, I've been on the receiving end of a variety of notices, requests, and demands from lawyers, cops, and federal agents. Wikileaks was mildly jerky, but the lawyers were even more so. If they had a problem with particular documents and intended to sue in the US, they could have just said which documents and where they were planning to sue.
This isn't censorship, as the government isn't doing it. Nor ir it prior restraint on publication.
You did notice that it was shut down by a court, right? I know some think that courts are naturally occurring mineral formations, but I swear, this one is part of the federal government.
What's the big deal? Do the haters think people have the right to publish anything on the 'net, no matter how false or scurrilous, without any repercussions whatsoever??
I'm not sure if you're trolling here or just clueless, but I'll run with the latter. If the documents were actually false, then BJB should just say, "yet more Internet" and ignore them. Obviously, the problem is that the documents are actually valid but put them in a bad light.
We grant limited legal protection to information for reasons like "advancing the sciences and the useful arts" or running a legal business. Although it's a little amazing given our congressmen, those valid reasons to not include malfeasance, corruption, and skulduggery. In fact, just the opposite: whistleblowing is frequently protected by law because it helps us nab people up to things not in the public interest. Like, it appears, Bank Julius Baer and some of their clients.
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
I once worked at a place where a lot of people had security clearances. A coworker enjoyed scuba diving, and bought a condo in Grand Cayman. That security clearance whooshed away faster than a bottle of vodka in Britney Spear's glove compartment.
Eventually the coworker was reinstated, so there are bind fide reasons for transacting business in the Caymans. Scuba diving, nig game fishing, genocide, drug dealing, weapons smuggling, corporate espionage come to mind, in addition to plain old tax fraud.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Hmm. This claim is plausible, if improbable coming from a user ID under 50K.
However, because I'm just that kind of guy, I'll step in for you.
In modern times, the use of all capital letters in electronic messaging has come to signify emphasis, or a raised voice. As more and more internet communication is conducted on forums with internal markup, instead of the flat 7-bit ASCII NNTP favored, this convention's technical justification has begun to fade.
There is a strong reaction against using all-capital letters in a message for this reason; uppercase letters are more difficult to read than lower-case letters, and anyone willing to type in all upppercase is frequently unwilling to use punctuation or paragraphing, adding to the headache of potential viewers.
Use uppercase letters sparingly, like a strong seasoning, to give your words flavor and tone.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Apparently they have a U.S. mutual fund unit. Other than that, all I can find in regards to U.S. activity is an New York Address.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Did anyone see the Associated Press coverage? link.
"An effort at damage control has snowballed into a public relations disaster for a Swiss bank seeking to crack down on a renegade Web site for posting classified information about some of its wealthy clients."
Apparently, company information is "classified information", and WikiLeaks is a "renegade" website. I guess it is compared to the Associated Press. Here's a high school example of propaganda. Perhaps it was written by a high school student.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Not to defend the bank, but a set of documents CAN be both legitimate and forged at the same time. Some can be real and some can be false. The problem that the bank could be in (if they aren't totally lying) is that only demanding the take down of the real documents in the C&D will expose which records are real, and as such need to be kept confidential. The ONLY thing the bank could do in that case is to BOTH deny any of the documents are true and demand that they all be taken down.
Transfer all your money to them, then take it out as cash. Actual physical paper and metal.
Because of the fractional reserve multiplier it has a currently 10 fold (in the USA, 30 fold in the UK and 50 fold in the EU) effect on their ability to generate further loans.
Deleted
Looking at the archive of correspondence, it looks to me like both sides were evasive, rude and snotty. Both sides, no doubt, had their reasons. Given the nature of the web site, and the history of this kind of fight, were I the bank's lawyers, I'd be very concerned that they would zip it all up and send it off to a hundred other web sites as soon as they got file names, especially if they could so do legally (and they could, since they wouldn't have gotten the C&D yet). Given the history of such C&D efforts, I can see why the web site wouldn't want to give out any freebies to the other side's lawyers.
However, in the end, the only thing Wikileaks made available to the bank to deal with was their domain name. I can't imagine how else they thought this would go, when the bank had no other path to follow.
Is that when the plaintiff gets to be on top, or is it the other way around?
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.