PayPal Freezes the Assets of Wikileaks.org

matsh sends word that PayPal has frozen the assets of wikileaks.org. From their Web site: "Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue. By working with the respected and recognized German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung we tried to avoid this from happening again — apparently without avail." The submitter adds: "Hopefully we can pressure PayPal to resolve this quickly, since this seems like a dangerous political decision."

Comments

Crooks get assets frozen, news at 11

[jensend]

I'm not the biggest fan of PayPal, and I know they've made a lot of bad moves in the past. But this seems to me to be just the system at work as it ought to be. Wikileaks has broken all sorts of laws, caused tons of harm to people, and undermined the rule of law. If anyone expects to have any privacy in the modern world then Wikileaks has to be held accountable for its irresponsible actions. Everybody's pager messages from 9/11, copyrighted works, non-newsworthy military secrets only of use to the enemies of the US whose release endangers those serving in the military, etc. I feel safer knowing their assets are frozen, and so should you.

Typical Slashdot slander.

[MrPerfekt]

No wrong could possibly ever be done by the end user. It's always PayPal's fault. Ridiculous!

Half of the things that wikileaks does is borderline illegal. I'm not saying that the things they expose don't, but there might be better means of doing it. I have no idea if Wikileaks has broken the ToS but it's perfectly within PayPal's rights to freeze an account for fraud.

9 times out of 10, it's an automatic restriction put in place by various fraud rules. It happens and is also why PayPal doesn't lose their ass to fraud.

PayPal for the record of course wants to become a bank. But it's a long slow process to do so. Stop acting like PayPal is trying to skirt the law by not being a US bank. It's more of a hassle sometimes to not be and certainly costs more in the end.