In February 2008, Bank Julius Baer & Co. sued WikiLeaks in the United States over confidential documents concerning anonymized trusts and offshore accounts allegedly connected to the bank’s Cayman Islands operations between 1997 and 2002. The documents were associated with former employee Rudolf Elmer, who was suspected of disclosing them. Judge Jeffrey White issued a permanent injunction ordering domain registrar Dynadot to lock wikileaks.org, temporarily making the site inaccessible through its primary domain, although mirror sites and direct IP access remained available.
The order triggered opposition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, media organizations, and free-speech advocates, who argued that it improperly restricted publication on First Amendment grounds. Judge White lifted the injunction on February 29, 2008, restoring the domain, and Julius Baer dropped the case on March 5. The episode became an early digital censorship and “Streisand effect” case: an attempt to suppress allegedly confidential banking information amplified public attention and highlighted the limits of using domain infrastructure and courts to control online disclosures.
