A federal judge in San Francisco who had ordered the shutdown of a whistle-blowers' Web site where private bank documents were posted changed his mind Friday, conceding his original ruling might not have been constitutional.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White drew nationwide attention, and widespread criticism from civil liberties groups and news organizations, with his Feb. 15 injunction requiring a Bay Area Internet registrar to disable the Wikileaks.org site and prevent the organization from transferring to another server.

Wikileaks describes itself as an enabler of "principled leaking" by government and corporate insiders, who post documents on the site anonymously. The injunction was requested by a Swiss bank, Julius Baer & Co., whose documents, purporting to show tax fraud and money-laundering by customers with funds in the Cayman Islands, were displayed on the Web site.

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The bank said the documents were stolen or forged and invaded its customers' privacy.

The shutdown order was negotiated by the bank and Dynadot, the San Mateo company that registered Wikileaks' use of the Web site. But the American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen and a host of media advocates and owners - including Hearst Corp., which owns The Chronicle - called the injunction an unprecedented assault on free expression and likened it to closing a newspaper because of objections to one article.

After a three-hour hearing Friday, White dissolved the injunction. He also rejected the bank's request to extend a restraining order that required Wikileaks and the Internet registrar to remove the bank documents from the Web site. The restraining order expired Friday.

Such decrees raise "serious questions of prior restraint (on speech) and possible violations of the First Amendment," White said.

He also said federal courts may lack jurisdiction over the case because the bank has failed to show that Wikileaks, or anyone responsible for its operations, is based in the United States.

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