Wikileaks just got some legal backup.

The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a motion last night to intervene in the case. The two groups are seeking to roll back a federal California judge's sweeping order earlier this month that blocked access to wikileaks.org. The order came as a result of a Swiss bank's complaint that the site was distributing confidential documents that allegedly show shell accounts used to hide assets.

A lawyer for the ACLU and EFF said that shutting down the site was a case of "burning down the house to roast the pig." It's wrong, the groups argue, that the public has lost access to all of the documents that wikileaks has to offer (well, at least through wikileaks.org -- a number of mirror sites have sprung up to counter the order).

The groups are seeking to intervene in the case on behalf of themselves, the Project on Government Oversight, a D.C. watchdog, and Jordan McCorkle, a student at the University of Texas who uses wikileaks on a regular basis.

Update: Public Citizen and the California First Amendment Coalition have also sought to intervene in the case.

Update: A group of journalism organizations has also sought to file an amicus brief on Wikileaks' behalf. Those organizations are: the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Associated Press, the Citizen Media Law Project, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, The Los Angeles Times, the National Newspaper Association, the Newspaper Association of America, the Radio-Television News Directors Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists.

As we noted Monday, a Swiss bank convinced a California judge to issue an order blocking access to WikiLeaks.org. The New York Times makes clear this morning that it was a ham-handed and probably unconstitutional move.

Ham-handed because even though the injunction was sweeping in its scope (disabling access to the domain name), it will certainly not accomplish its goal, which was to restrict dissemination of the documents. Not only have dozens of mirror sites cropped up to host the documents, but the publicity from the move has also increased scrutiny on the bank, Julius Baer, and heightened WikiLeaks' supporters' resolve. Update: And the site is still available via its IP address. The documents allegedly show the bank's efforts to set up shell entities to hide money. And as for the unconstitutional part:

Judge [Jeffrey] White’s order disabling the entire site “is clearly not constitutional,” said David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School. “There is no justification under the First Amendment for shutting down an entire Web site.”

The narrower order [also issued by the judge], forbidding the dissemination of the disputed documents, is a more classic prior restraint on publication. Such orders are disfavored under the First Amendment and almost never survive appellate scrutiny.

When I asked Julian Assange, a member of WikiLeaks' advisory board and its investigations editor, whether WikiLeaks plans to contest the injunction in court, he replied by email, "Bloody oath we will."

He said that WikiLeaks, which relies on pro bono representation, was currently in talks with a number of lawyers and organizations for possible representation. As Wired reported, the site was caught by surprise late last week, receiving "notice only a few hours before the case went to a judge who accepted the agreement between Dynadot [WikiLeaks' domain registrar] and the bank."

My inquiries to Julius Baer's attorneys about possible future actions were forwarded to a spokesman for the bank in Switzerland, who replied "We have always sought to act in the best interests of our clients and shall continue to do so."

From the BBC:

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says. The case was brought by a Swiss bank after "several hundred" documents were posted about its offshore activities.

Other versions of the pages, hosted in countries such as Belgium and India, can still be accessed.

However, the main site was taken offline after the court ordered that Dynadot, which controls the site's domain name, should remove all traces of wikileak from its servers.

Wikileaks has been the source for a number of revelatory documents, including the U.S. military's manual for Gitmo and the rules of engagement for U.S. troops in Iraq.

But see it for yourself, wikileaks.org is indeed out of commission. The Belgian wikileaks, however, is still up.

As for why this California judge ordered the whole site taken down over a few documents, that's not clear. As the BBC reports, "The case was brought by lawyers working for the Swiss banking group Julius Baer. It concerned several documents posted on the site which allegedly reveal that the bank was involved with money laundering and tax evasion." Why didn't the judge just didn't order the documents taken down instead of the whole site? We hope to get some expert guidance on the question.

Update: Just spoke with Steve Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy, who offered a clue. "My hunch is that the action was dictated by the practical options. [The judge and Julius Baer] don't know who wikileaks.org is or who the responsible parties are upon whom a court order could be served. What they did know was the U.S. based internet service provider." So they got the ISP to shut the site down. "If they had known who to serve the order to – who represents Wikileaks --, then they might have chosen a more targeted action." Nevertheless, he thought the judge's move was "extraordinary," based as it was on the bank's contention that these were legally protected documents.

A large number of mirror sites have sprung up to counter the judge's move -- sites mirroring not only wikileaks, but also the Julius Baer documents at issue.

"Wikileaks had boasted that they were impervious to censorship," Aftergood told me. "This is the most serious test they've faced in their year-long existence. They may lose their current website, but dozens of mirrors around the world will endure. And I expect they will regroup."

Update: Here's the judge's order. And here's the motion for injunction filed by Julius Baer.

The court documents show that no lawyer has stepped forward to defend Wikileaks in the case, and that Wikileaks did not respond to Julius Baer's legal filings, including the original complaint, which was filed February 8th.

Update: The link to the judge's order has been fixed. Thanks to commenter rincewind below.

Update: Wired has a good tick-tock of the case -- and an explanation for why Wikileaks does not have a lawyer of record in the case and hasn't yet contested the suit in court. Also, Wikileaks has posted some of its correspondence with lawyers for Julius Baer.

At the very least, if the Bush Administration expires and we are still at war only in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can count ourselves lucky.

The New York Times reports on the latest treasure unearthed by Wikileaks, a 2005 27-page document showing the U.S. military's Rules of Engagement in Iraq. Most worrying of all, the rules allowed for cross-border raids into Iran or Syria:

In a section on crossing international borders, the document said the permission of the American defense secretary was required before American forces could cross into or fly over Iranian or Syrian territory. Such actions, the document suggested, would probably also require the approval of President Bush.

But the document said that there were cases in which such approval was not required: when American forces were in hot pursuit of former members of Mr. Hussein’s government or terrorists....

It stated that the American commander engaged in the pursuit, however, should consult with top commanders in Baghdad, “time permitting.”

The Times notes that it's unknown whether this ever happened or whether the rules are any different now. Hold your breath.

But there are other interesting aspects to the document. Certainly the preoccupation with former members of Saddam Hussein's government, rather than foreign terrorists, was not reflected in the administration's rhetoric at the time.

And then there's this:

Apparently in a carryover from the intelligence failures of the Iraq invasion in early 2003, the document says the United States Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, gave American commanders in Iraq the authority to attack mobile “W.M.D. labs”; such labs for making germ weapons were later determined not to exist.