Wikileads

When Bank Julius Baer couldn’t find a Wikileaks representative to bring to court, the Cayman Islands bank served a Wikileaks Facebook group officer with a summons.

The summons filed by the bank stated that Daniel Mathews, a Stanford grad student who writes for Wikileaks (but not about Bank Julius Baer), was an officer of Wikileaks - even though he was not. Mathews had contributed to Wikileaks, authoring articles as a volunteer, but had no behind-the-scenes authority.

However, he was - and still is - Stanford’s representative for the Wikileaks Facebook group.

According to Mathews’ attorney, Joshua Koltun, the motion brought against Mathews had no legal bearing.

“I think they were basically trying to grasp for straws,” said Koltun, explaining why lawyers for Bank Julius Baer dragged Mathews into the case. The lawyers, Koltun said, were trying to “impress the judge with the notion that they had served Wikileaks.”

“I’m assuming they were just Googling and prodding around in search of someone to serve,” he said.

Last week I spoke with Koltun about Wikileaks, Mathews and Bank Julius Baer to find out who was liable in this case and to try to determine which of Wikileaks’ actions could get them in trouble with the law.

Read the rest of the post for interview highlights.