Wikileaks Closes Operations Temporarily Due to Budget Woes: Via Threat Level.

Wikileaks, the controversial whistleblower site, has temporarily shuttered its operations due to a dearth of funds to meet its operating costs.

The site announced last December that it planned to temporarily cease operations, save for its anonymous submission tool, until it could raise money for its operating costs.

But it has so far been unable to meet those needs. The site’s annual costs are $200,000 — $600,000 if staff is paid — but it has raised only $130,000 so far. The site will remain closed to allow administrators to focus on fundraising efforts.

A note on the web site’s main page reads: We protect the world — but will you protect us?

“We have received hundreds of thousands of pages from corrupt banks, the US detainee system, the Iraq war, China, the UN and many others that we do not currently have the resources to release,” the pages reads. “You can change that and by doing so, change the world. Even $10 will pay to put one of these reports into another ten thousand hands and $1000, a million.”

The site, launched in 2007, as an online clearinghouse for anonymous submissions of documents, images and other data. It has received awards from Amnesty International and has been praised by media groups and others for providing a forum for whistleblowers, political dissidents and others to expose corruption and suppression and foster transparency.

It’s run by the Sunshine Press, said to be composed of anonymous human rights activists, investigative journalists, technologists and members of the general public around the world.

The site has proven to be fertile ground for leaked documents and has regularly scooped mainstream media outlets in obtaining documents and information on hot and controversial topics. Documents posted at its site have become the focus of numerous mainstream media stories.

In 2007, the site published a 238-page U.S. military manual that detailed the day-to-day operations of the Defense Department’s Guantánamo Bay detention facility as well as a manual for operating the CIA’s rendition flights, which involved undocumented detainees who were kidnapped in various locations and flown to countries outside the U.S. for interrogation and torture.

Wikileaks was also the first to publish data from Sarah Palin’s private Yahoo e-mail account after a Tennessee college student gained unauthorized access to the account two months before the 2008 presidential election.

The site’s immense value to the public and media has also made it the target of numerous legal challenges.

In 2008, a judge tried to shutter the site by ordering its U.S. host to take it offline after a Cayman Islands bank complained that the site was publishing proprietary documents.

The Julius Baer Bank, a Swiss bank with a division in the Cayman Islands, took issue with documents that were published on Wikileaks by an unidentified whistleblower, whom the bank claimed was the former vice president of its Cayman Islands operation, Rudolf Elmer. The documents purported to provide evidence that the Cayman Islands bank helps customers hide assets and wash funds.

The judge reversed his decision a week later after numerous groups stepped forward to support Wikileaks, saying the judge’s decision constituted prior restraint, a violation of the First Amendment.

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