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."

it is used for tax evading and money laundering

[someone1234]

So, it is more like for private people than institutions.

Re:Looks like my dreams have been canceled

[I confirm I'm not a]

In the UK there used to an agency called "Customs and Excise". They - unlike the police - carried guns on operations, they didn't trust or liaise with the police, and they normally didn't need a search warrant to carry out raids. The government decided that they weren't powerful enough, and merged them with...
drumroll...
the Inland Revenue!

Re:Who needs DNS?

[BridgeBum]

Wikipedia has it. 88.80.13.160

Re:You fail.

[jesdynf]

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.

Re:it is used for tax evading and money laundering

[milsoRgen]

Apparently they have a U.S. mutual fund unit. [forbes.com] Other than that, all I can find in regards to U.S. activity is an New York Address. [newyorkcity.com]

Re:they make a good point:

[jtheisen]

Which is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago here in Europe: German tax offices bought (with the help of the BND, Germany's service for foreign intelligence) records from a leaker of a bank in Lichtenstein with information about who had foundations there - foundations that are almost always used in order to commit tax fraud. They bought it for 3 million Euro, but claimed to get much more than that back. The CEO of the German Post fell over that scandal. According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, many other countries, including the US, also bought that information. Naturally, Liechtenstein got quite a fit about this and accused the German goverment of "Hehlerei im großen Stil" (legal expression, to receive stolen goods as a criminal act).

Re:Go BJ Baer!

[oliphaunt]

Anyone who needs a refresher on the free-speech implications can find it here (although digg found it first, so the whole article is temporarily posted static on the main page):

Vying for Control of the Internet: is Wikileaks Unstoppable? [thelegality.com]

Plenty of blame for both sides

[taustin]

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.

Re:Non-truths?

[dubbreak]

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.

Have you not heard of superposition? It's a matter of quantum legal entanglement.

In law you can have "conflicting" statements via alternative arguments. For instance:

• I was not at the scene of the crime.
• alternatively, I was at the scene of the crime but was not involved and did not see the crime take place from my vantage point.
• in the further alternative, I was there, saw it happen but was unable to intervene or identify the culprits

It may seem to logically conflict, but each argument stands by itself. You could think of each alternative argument as a root to an individual tree (i.e. you can have multiple starting points for your arguments, they don't all have to start from one premise).

Of course it should be said IANAL, and the only time i've seen alternative arguments the alternative were plausible, it's just the facts at hand might end up working better for a certain path of argument, for example:

• y acted as an agent for X in the contract between X and Z
• in the alternativge, y acted as an agent for Z
• in the further alternative, there was a direct contract formed between X and Z