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PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service
ItsIllak writes "The BBC are reporting that PayPal is the latest company to abandon WikiLeaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). PayPal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company, as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices."
Adds reader jg21: "As open source freedom fighter Simon Phipps writes in his ComputerWorldUK blog, behavior like this by Amazon and Tableau [and now PayPal] 'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to worry about.
Isn't that what they tell us when they pry into our affairs...?
No sig today...
Wikileaks, which is revealing the truth about governments and therefore aiding (in a way) the democratic process - is being killed off because it is risky for companies to continue supporting it....
Freedom works both ways. I give you the freedom of speech, but please allow me the freedom to not do business with you.
I don't so much mind the fact that some american businesses are bigoted red-necks. The politicians are the one to watch.
well, Guess it's time to close that account then.
what a bunch of bullshit. I'm getting so tired of the the divide that's developing.
It is surprising, watching the entire WikiLeaks controversy, how quickly American corporations discard the concepts and ideals of the American constitution.
"most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years "
While it's true that paypal generates animosity for some, I still think that the above statement requires a source before putting it in the article summary like it's a fact.
Yes, it's always dangerous to do business with large companies like Amazon or Paypal that aggressively try to obtain a monopoly in their market, because these kind of companies usually give a shit about individual customers. For my shareware I've been using Kagi from the start and never had any problem with them.
But I must confess that I'm still using Amazon S3 for my backups. (I wonder what happens if I upload a copy of the cable leaks in unencrypted form? Will my account be canceled without prior notice and all my backups be gone?)
Question: Can anyone recommend a reasonably prized alternative to the S3/Jungledisk combo?
There were idiots believing there could be freedom with full feudalism (capitalism) being allowed in the economic side of life, and democracy and equality in the political side of life.
....
See how that works ? you are free to say anything you want, from the political side, but, you dont have the MEANS to say it from the economic side.
basically, the corporations which dominate the economic side, determine how far your freedom goes. it doesnt matter ZIT whether you are allowed full freedoms in the political side of life.
its stupid anyway - you let everyone be free and equal, but, you give the control of the means to exercise those freedoms to the most wealthy. what did you think would happen ?
this
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Yea! Aren't you PROUD to be an American?
Yes
I'm surprised, I'd have thought Paypal would have been the first to cut ties. Especially considering their connection to Meg Whitman.
Though, this is probably a good thing. Considering Paypal's reputation and standing, Paypal is a company that Wikileaks should have been publishing documents about, rather than using as a payment partner.
I think there is a real possibility that the more they stamp down on wikileaks the more people are likely to support it. You don't need paypal to get donations. Unless the government is going to open mail and remove checks (I suppose that COULD happen) wikileaks will get support.
As for the Web site, copies of it will float around forever in bittorrent, question is,...will we see wikileaks move completely over to something like freenet (which it has not done but it is being mirrored by 3rd party individuals on freenet)
I don't know, I donated to Wikileaks once, and then the following week a package of over 10,000 of my private emails, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc, was leaked and republished in the New York Times and Guardian Newspaper.
Never again...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I must say, this is sizing up to be quite an interesting chapter in our history. The pressure put on these companies by angry or embarrassed government entities must be enormous.
Or nonexistent. Seeing as we've seen no report of governmental influence other than one company saying they unilaterally booted Wikileaks after a Senator made a public statement condemning Wikileaks, any supposition of governmental pressure is pure conjecture. One could also surmise that companies might find doing business with a website which is at the very least hostile toward the US government isn't part of their business plan and cut ties. Or maybe they're really patriotic. The point is, we don't know if the government has pressured American companies not to do business with Wikileaks. I suspect it wouldn't take much leaning on the part of the government to convince them to stop, at any rate. I know this doesn't fit the narrative here at /., what with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, but in the real world businesses do what is in their own best interests.
This has suddenly become an excellent business opportunity to any company that wants free publicity and wishes to get a chunk of Paypal's business. It only needs to contact wikileaks and offer their regular service, along with an assurance that they won't cancel the account. That, alone, will contrast with Paypal's notorious appalling business behaviour, which systematically lets their paying customers hang out to dry.
So, care to put your money where your mouth is, alertpay and co ?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I think it's pretty commonly known that paypal sucks. Not that long ago Paypal locked the account of the indie developer of Minecraft for no good reason, holding over $600k hostage.
I have demanded that they reinstate wikileaks account, and noted that i would migrate my business from paypal to other means, and also advise my ecommerce clients to do as such too. In addition, because im in the Eu zone, i have filed my complaint under 'file a complaint in the european union'.
i have also stated that i was going to file an official complaint with the European Parliament regarding the matter, unless the account is not reinstated. As a citizen of a candidate country, i have that right. Any citizen of any member or candidate country, has that right. If you file your complaint properly with your name, address, it is processed by Eu Parl even if it is by email.
take action.
i said, i didnt want to do business with a corporation that caves into the pressure of a single senator from a single country. Let paypal show its international, if it wants to do business internationally.
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That last line in the summary seems to be implying a big negative reason for adopting cloud computing.
Doing that wasnt on my mind even. Thanks, whichever moron, has pressurized paypal to suspend them. They made me donate to wikileaks.
Thank you for your donation.
Your payment of EUR 25 has been received 4.12.2010 16:02:31
With your VISA xxxxxxxxxxxx9516
Reference : 5729
The Wikileaks Team, Sunshine Press
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Actually, the US has laws against funding terrorist organizations, and is moving to try to put Wikileaks on that list. So there may be either fear on the part of the businesses, or else behind-the-scenes pressure (a "friendly warning" from the FBI for instance) to do so.
At the same time, I can't fault Paypal for their actions. I used to donate to UNICEF, but I stopped when it was revealed that a sizable portion of money from them was being used to fund "summer camps" like the Wafa Idris, Ayyat al-Akhras and Dalal Mughrabi summer camps; these are named after suicide bombing terrorists and places where nothing but hate and racism is taught to children.
I dunno if you've noticed lately but:
A. The government is taking down domain names without warrants
B. The government is pressuring hosts to remove services
C. The government is encouraging if not mandating ISP to throttle bit torrents
D. The government is tracking US citizens Via their Credit cards, telephone conversations, Internet traffic and cellphones without warrants.
E. All sorts of other nefarious things we aren't aware of yet...
Seriously, this is turning into a bad Oliver Stone movie.
Freedom of publication. But can you afford to pay for the press, the ink, the distribution?
Freedom of broadcasting. But can you afford the license fee for the frequency, the cost of powering the transmitter?
Freedom to gather. But can you afford to take a day of work, the travel expenses? Can you get a meeting place?
The chains of oppression are never more powerful then when those chains are of our own making. We make the super-companies and gave them the power to control society. Google dictates what you can put on a website, oh you can pay for bandwidth yourself but who can afford to pay for a DDOS attack traffic? So you get google ads and abide by their content laws or you get the money elsewhere.
Through paypal donations? Only when PayPal approves.
The proof? Boobies. There is no need for congress to ban boobies on TV, self regulation does it already. How nice. But it goes further. Just how do you get something published on TV if the powers that be do not want it? Oh, you might be able to get it on some tiny channel but then the fast majority will never see it.
Mission accomplished.
The conspiracy theory nuts never think devious enough. They fear jackbooted thugs marching down the street when it is so much simpler to simply let it be known that an action would displease you and all the little puppets spring into action to prevent the risk that this displeasement might come on their necks. I could whip you into obeying my orders, or I could make you fear you won't have a job tomorrow with which to pay your credit card debt. I can only whip one person at a time. I can ruin thousands of lives by just signing a simple piece of paper except that the fear means I never have to do it to get you and your masters to obey.
We are seeing now in action what western democracy has become. And nothing will change. Because our masters have replaced the whip with credit card payments, mortages and Idols. The romans would have been proud. To bad they are gone, bread and circusses didn't work out to well for us. Doubt it will for us.
Wonder what the Chinese are making of all this. They seen the romans rice and fall, are we just another empire to die as the Chinese empire continues?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Me too.
If the US moves Wikileaks on the list of terrorist organizations, I move the US on my list of fascist nations.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
But he's not an Anonymous Coward calling others names on Slashdot.
I recall reading here that since Paypal isn't a bank, that they get to do lots of very questionable things with your money in the paypal account. Is it likely they did the same thing here?
I don't see how. They are, after all, refusing to accept Wikileaks supporters' money, so there is no means for financial gain. I suspect someone at PayPal might be thinking ahead to avoid civil or criminal lawsuits ("providing assistance to terrorists"?). I'm not saying this position is legally right or wrong, but I can understand why they might think Wilikeaks' business might present more trouble than it's worth.
Incidentally, I take issue with the claim in the summary that "most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them [PayPal, that is] for years for a wide variety of abusive practices". Most of these cases appear to stem directly from many people's practice of treating PayPal as a bank, when its main purpose is to provide a convenient means for transferring funds. If I were a shopkeeper who left months' worth of takings sitting in the till, I would have nobody to blame but myself if someone came along and stole them. If you have funds worth keeping, it makes sense to put them somewhere where you can be reasonably confident of finding them again. I would never consider an unregulated website, hosted offshore, as such a repository. However, PayPal is a superb way of transferring funds from one individual to another.
How is the contrary (ie, forcing companies to host and support any speech whether they like it or not) no less oppressive?
So if the Neo-Nazis or NAMBLA want to be hosted by Amazon, Amazon has to let them? What about a rival entity, like B&N? Does PayPal have to handle transactions for their rivals? By your all-caps logic, to deny them would be OPPRESSION and AGAINST FREE SPEECH.
Things aren't black and white. I won't try to dictate where the line is drawn between standing for oppression and standing for freedom, but please try to grasp that there is a discussion that needs to be had (and continuously had, not just once) about it. Your view isn't the only one or even the one that results in the fairest, most reasonable outcome.
Me too.
I see you're an AOL user. Didn't know they were still around.
I guess this is the time when the veil's opened and we realize that the web designed by Tim Berners-Lee, is dead.
The Internet has stopped being the land of free-speech as we know it. At any time that corporate or government interests are against free speech, they just hit the political off-switch. If someone decides to install internet routers and domain systems in another country, expect that country to be labelled "terrorist" and invaded by those with power.
Expect peer-to-peer information sources and services to be outlawed. Guess the cyberpunks authors got it right after all.
How is the contrary (ie, forcing companies to host and support any speech whether they like it or not) no less oppressive? So if the Neo-Nazis or NAMBLA want to be hosted by Amazon, Amazon has to let them? What about a rival entity, like B&N? Does PayPal have to handle transactions for their rivals? By your all-caps logic, to deny them would be OPPRESSION and AGAINST FREE SPEECH. Things aren't black and white. I won't try to dictate where the line is drawn between standing for oppression and standing for freedom, but please try to grasp that there is a discussion that needs to be had (and continuously had, not just once) about it. Your view isn't the only one or even the one that results in the fairest, most reasonable outcome.
dont bullshit. there are set standards in regard to declaration of human rights, on this planet. EVERYthing that is considered civil and modern ideals and principles for civilization today, are based on these.
seeking to kill people based on race does not relate to any of those principles.
your argument is null and void.
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So, exposing what a criminal/terrorist/etc government does make YOU an criminal/terrorist/etc, at least in the eyes of Paypal, Inc.
you know, the kind who dedicated their lives so that others could live: the kind who actually lost their lives.
you mean, the ones who lost their lives while propagating invasions, occupations so that american corporations can create mandates and get access to resources ?
in NO war after world war ii, there has been a situation in which american soldiers were dying for defending freedom and preventing oppression. in ALL situations, and that includes somalia, they were sent to those places to further private interests's aims in the region. Any zone either had strategic resources (panama canal, middle east), or, natural resources (somalia, middle east, oil).
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Paypal is basically discriminating against an entity/person based in European Union, based on political pressure in united states.
United states, is not in european union.
Petition european parliament at the below url via their online form, or, mail your petition to the address below and ask European Parliament look into the practices of Paypal in european union, and take action against their holdings in Eu, if they are found in violation. If they are to do business in European union, they have to abide by its rules and regulations.
https://www.secure.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/public/petition/secured/submit.do?language=EN
Committee on Petitions
The Secretariat
Rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels
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http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html
Dated 2007. Anything newer?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Any person proud to be of a specific nationality is by definition an idiot. Pride reflects a choice of actions. Pride is often confused with arrogance. Arrogance is the pride exhibited by those who have no cause to feel pride (e.g., someone of noble birth looking down on a commoner). Pride is also seldomly confused with inspiration.
Which is it? Are these companies totally gutless? Unable to recognize the positive publicity they could spin from this? Or - more likely - have they been put under back-room pressure by governmental officials? If so, they should publish *that* through Wikileaks.
The accounts were terminated, because Wikileaks violated their terms of service. Specifically "encouraging illegal activity". Of course the material is illegal - lots of it is classified, and whoever leaked it violated the law. That's kind of the point. Whistleblowing is always against some regulation, be it corporate or governmental. Whistleblowing to expose corrupt, unethical or simply improper practices nonetheless remains important, and should be supported.
In the current round of Wikileaks stuff, I haven't heard of any major bombshells. However, the sheer mass of classified materials points to improper governmental secrecy. There is no reason for most of this stuff to be classified in any way. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson named fourteen points for preserving international peace. His very first point includes the statement: "...there shall be no private international understanding of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view."
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
That is why so many of us believe in property rights, the rights to the fruits of our labors and the right to freely trade with others.
then you are a moron.
'property rights, 'rights of the fruits of our labors', and 'the right to freely trade with others', ends up at THIS point, if there is no size to the limit of an entity or an individual in regard to resources :
in a dog eat dog world of competition, you eventually end up with a few very fat dogs.
and those fattest dogs have the say on what happens and what does not, REGARDLESS of your delusions and self-indulgences about 'freedom of market and fruits of labors' and whatnot.
see, paypal is now the de facto provider of payment around the internet. it suspended wikileaks account. if 2 more major providers of payment suspends them, say, visa, or mastercard, then wikileaks will be practically unable to use modern payment methods, and people will have to snail mail.
lets see, if 2-3 major backbone providers, who control the traffic in most of united states, suspends or slows down their traffic, wikileaks site will not be visible to 200 million + americans.
see ?
in the world you describe, private INDIVIDUALS and CORPORATIONS decide what your freedom is.
and, your freedom, as you can see is, 'not'.
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http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2010/12/amazon-severs-ties-with-wikileaks
Clearly Lieberman's office called them before they took it down. It is not cool at all in my book for government officials to be calling web providers and demanding "an explanation". It's unpatriotic. Downright un-American.
Clearly Amazon reported their compliance to Lieberman after they did it.
Clearly Lieberman thinks it is a good idea for communications service companies to be under the heel of random senators' offices. It would seem that in his and Amazon's view, cloud computing and data center hosting arrangements should be provisioned at the pleasure of His Royal Highness.
Lieberman and Amazon need to go on record and explain whether or not this policy should extend to other organizations such as The New York Times and The Washington Post. Amazon needs to make a statement about whether or not The New York Times is welcome to host on their EC2 service, and whether or not they intend to exercise editorial control.
Is this guy channeling Nixon, or what?
If I were a shopkeeper who left months' worth of takings sitting in the till, I would have nobody to blame but myself if someone came along and stole them.
Are you saying that one should not blame the theif?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
It's funny that the government - by abridging one of our most fundamental freedoms - is claiming to protect our freedom.
So now it's come to pass that organizations don't even have to have terrorist motives or perform a terrorist action to be so labeled?
Fuck this. Unless it's revolution time, it's time for me to leave.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I've closed my account today. And I hope my donation to them via Paypal done about a week ago has reached them.
I'm sure that given a certain preexisting worldview, Lieberman's claims would seem pretty damning. However, Amazon flat out denies that government pressure was behind their dumping of Wikileaks as a customer.
Message
There have been reports that a government inquiry prompted us not to serve WikiLeaks any longer. That is inaccurate.
There have also been reports that it was prompted by massive DDOS attacks. That too is inaccurate. There were indeed large-scale DDOS attacks, but they were successfully defended against.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) rents computer infrastructure on a self-service basis. AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy. Human rights organizations have in fact written to WikiLeaks asking them to exercise caution and not release the names or identities of human rights defenders who might be persecuted by their governments.
We’ve been running AWS for over four years and have hundreds of thousands of customers storing all kinds of data on AWS. Some of this data is controversial, and that’s perfectly fine. But, when companies or people go about securing and storing large quantities of data that isn’t rightfully theirs, and publishing this data without ensuring it won’t injure others, it’s a violation of our terms of service, and folks need to go operate elsewhere.
We look forward to continuing to serve our AWS customers and are excited about several new things we have coming your way in the next few months.
— Amazon Web Services
If it was illegal, why hasn't the justice department issued an indictment for Julian Assange? Or perhaps gone after Wikileaks itself? It's all been political sabre rattling, because wikileaks itself is completely legal, they can't do anything else.
Wikileaks should sue Paypal over this, they have unilaterally declared wikileaks illegal with no charges having been filed. They are directly violating their contract for service. Amazon's terms had some wiggle room, but Paypal is just full of shit.
This absolutely stinks of backroom political pressure.
This sentence no verb.
Isn't it interesting that Amazon quite genuinely publicly defended a Paedophilia how-to guidebook longer than Wikileaks? I'm surprised no one else seems to be talking about this in all the discussions I've seen so far on Wikileaks being dropped.
Though the author claimed it did no wrong, and was about 'loving children', reports stated it went so far as to discuss how to create custom condoms for use with children, that's a far cry from innocent intent, but an attack on the innocent.
"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable," it stated.
And yet the single biggest defender of the right to true free speech this century, perhaps even ever, is dumped from their servers quicker than 'TSA for dummies, a terrorists guide' would be.
I find the timing of the massive attempts to shutdown wikileaks at all costs curious (maybe it's just the conspiracy theorist in me). I have no doubt those in power were aware of the pending release of the Afganistan diaries in July. This dump contained information and videos embarrassing (to say the least) to the US, but no real attempt was made to block it's release. The next major dump (gablegate) was no doubt anticipated beforehand as well and we began seeing some moves afoot to try and block it's dissemination, but no "bring the hammer down and stop it at all costs before it gets out" effort. That seems to have changed last week. The government is now warning all military, civilian and contractors to not download and/or read the documents, or they might jeopardize their jobs (or worse). However, the documents are already out there and being reported on. It would seem a little late to try to put the genie back in the bottle, so what's going on here?
Could it be that the next announced major document dump , the so-called "banking information megadump" is the real dump that cannot be allowed to be made public? It's no secret that it's really the banks that control all governments, including the US (or so the conspiracy goes). I'm not sure how much stock to put in this conspiracy theory, but it does make a good deal of common sense that those with the money pull the levers.
I does make one wonder - I'm just sayin'
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
What -- you haven't already? Kinda behind the times aren't you?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
quite an interesting point he has there. pedophilia is more free than information it seems.
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they are basically governments in electronic payment field. they GOVERN electronic payment, to an extent of 80-90%.
THAT MAKES THEM DE FACTO GOVERNMENT IN THAT SECTOR.
you cant let them decide what your freedom will be.
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Getting slow at my age, young grasshopper. Enjoy your speed while it lasts.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
You didn't think this through before you started calling people idiots. LOTS of folks have chosen to become Americans.
... of how deeply fascist tendencies have crept into our socio-economic system.
Our government depends heavily upon the cooperation of the corporate community to perform enforcement functions that they themselves are prohibited from by the Constitution. In a true free market, business would tell the government to take a hike until such time as a court injunction was in hand. Up to that point, everyone's money is green. But its evident that our system provides incentives (or pressure) to the corporate world to participate in public policy initiatives, distorting supply and price signals upon which an efficient market depends.
Have gnu, will travel.
'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
Before entrusting your most precious services and data to the cloud, you better get an ironclad SLA. An SLA that requires high uptime and is violated by any intentional outage, except under very narrowly taylored conditions. An SLA that requires not only a refund to you, but a minimum amount of compensation designed to penalize the SP, and additional compensation for any damage to your business.
An SLA that allows you to require at your option an independent third party, to make the decision if the SLA has been violated and award you the money.
An SLA with built in recourse for the customer to Arbitrators or Courts of law, solely at customer's option, to mediate any dispute.
Narrowly taylored meaning, all possible Network Abuse must be understood by both parties. And the service provider's recourse for Network "Abuse" is limited, and service can be turned off without long advance notice, only in emergencies, such as compromised servers/accounts, high volume DoS, high volume Spam sending.
With the SP allowed to respond to phishing sites and malware containing websites on a hosted server, solely by gaining access to that server, removing or disabling malicious file(s) or url(s), and billing the user.
I must admit, Amazon does lose credibility here by passing sentence and taking down their servers when a court has not yet issued any orders. Wikileaks' practices seem to be possible illegal, but it is not clear that they actually are.
Amazon's SLA is anything but ironclad, so it's Wikileaks fault technically for subscribing to a service that does not carry protections for whatever unpopular things they are doing
I call on /.ers to do the same.
"We fought for Freedom and all we got was democracy"
- Pieter-Dirk Uys
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
I think usually people are "proud" to be of a specific nationality because they are proud of the "choice of actions" of that nation. I could say that I'm proud to be Canadian because of the actions taken by my nation, in much the same way that I could tell my child I'm proud of them for choosing right over wrong, for working hard on their piano practice, or for sticking up for a friend. Pride doesn't have to be completely centered around my own choices.
You're the idiot.
The US is a Republic, based on the idea that we the people govern the country. It was our successful experimentation in self-government that proved to the world that self-government could be done successfully, and that spread the idea of individual liberty across the entire world. In doing so the US changed the political landscape of the entire world for the better. I'd say that is an accomplishment of which any American can rightfully be proud.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
So in other words, you were a supporter until he did something you didn't like, and now you hate him. What is this, middle school? Grow up already.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
If you're going to take the credit for what your forefathers did in the 18th century (assuming that they were among the residents of the 13 colonies, which probably isn't the case for a large number, if not a majority, of current US citizens), then don't you also have to take the blame for all the mistakes and crimes the US has committed since then? Is the total still in your favour?
You didn't get it. The idea is that you're being irrational if you feel proud for yourself on behalf of something someone else did without a significant involvement by you in some way. You can be proud of your children in the sense that you had something to do with whatever they accomplished and that indirectly reflects on you. You can be proud of a friend if you played a significant role in his success. There might even be a tiny proportion of fans of sports teams that can rightfully be proud when they win due to them having done substantial things to make the win possible. The proportion of citizens that have cause to be proud of their country is just as tiny. No American alive today was involved in any way with the founding of America, and so feeling proud of what happened then is taking someone's else's glory for yourself - it is strutting stolen feathers. Not that that ever stopped anyone.
Yeah, neither do I.
Hey, let's try an experiment. You call up Amazon and demand an explanation of why they're selling copies of The Pentagon Papers (those are leaked government documents in case you didn't know) and we'll see how quickly they shut off amazon.com from their servers.
I guess you've never heard of these things called "campaign contributions" and "high paid corporate board member or lobbyist job when you leave office".
You seem to be saying that the way the world works is correct, by definition. Guess I don't fully accept that.
No laws were broken by systematic racial discrimination either (until it was made illegal of course). People who complained were told that it's "simply how the world works".
Yes, and I could possibly be held liable for doing it in ways that harm others or break laws.
When the US Government (e.g., a Senator's office) does it, in particular to restrain speech and press, it's falls under the scope of the US constitution.
The US is a Republic, based on the idea that we the people govern the country. It was our successful experimentation in self-government that proved to the world that self-government could be done successfully, and that spread the idea of individual liberty across the entire world. In doing so the US changed the political landscape of the entire world for the better. I'd say that is an accomplishment of which any American can rightfully be proud.
I agree that the people who accomplished this have something to be truly proud of. But you're not one of them. Instead, you're part of the group that have done nothing whilst your country has betrayed every ideal set by the founding fathers. Torture, ignoring the constitution, invading countries for no good reason. All done in the last 10 years, and the majority were cheering while it happened. You have very little to be proud of.
My UID is prime. Hah!
To all those who are saying, "Don't blame PayPal and Amazon, because they are responding to government pressure! It's the big bad government that's to blame, not friendly American businesses!" (and there are several of these in the above threads) I would just like to point out that your government/business dichotomy doesn't actually exist in the real world. While I'm sure some in the government have approached these companies, I'd be willing to bet my life the decisions were made for independent business reasons, because the large corporations know which side their bread is buttered on, and it's the side of a large and powerful US government.
Do you really believe the shareholders of PayPal and Amazon don't see a strong US government as profitable to them? Most of these shareholders own stock in many other corporations, probably including corporations who benefited from government giveaways in Iraq and Afghanistan, from hundreds of other government contracts, from bank bailouts, or from the auto bailout. Notably, anyone who owns stock in companies engaged in war profiteering suffers from both the diplomatic cable leaks and the military leaks because they need the government to have a free hand in matters of war and peace in order to make the decisions that most profit them.
In this country, large corporations and government are on the same side. They have been for decades. They work together to screw us. Think about it: who do politicians most closely listen to? Lobbyists. Who has most of the lobbyists? Big corporations. The only time government and big corporations are NOT on the same side is when we, the people, really push our government to do something different, and at that point government sometimes does something somewhat beneficial while corporations fight it and claim the government is "anti-business". The truth is, the government is never anti-business except when businesses are doing something really wrong and the people stand up to vocally oppose them.
After all, how could an entity controlled by business be anti-business?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
It's not just throwing out diplomatic cables. If that's all they needed to do, they wouldn't need a whole organization. They could just use Tor and the hundreds of other back channels by which data circulates on the internet. But consider all the other things that Wikileaks actually does besides distributing data:
These four tasks are absolutely indispensable. If some future Wikileaks copycat thinks that it's enough to dump out documents, then the world is really in trouble. Wikileaks doesn't get enough credit for all the work they do to make sure their leaking is done in a responsible way.
Not just Paypal but Wells Fargo as well. When I heard about Paypal and Amazon I went to the wikileaks website to make a donation. Not only was my charge denied but they put a hold on my card! Talk about harassment. It's bad enough when your own government breaks the law, worse when vendors decide to run a protection racket when they disagree with a customer's purchases/donations.
"Geez, I still don't see why prosecutor Marianne Ny (email address: marianne.ny@aklagare.se ) didn't follow any of the standard judicial and prosecutorial procedures; maybe we should ALL contact her to see what's going on?"
"And what's up with Justice Skarhed? (email: anna.skarhed@justitiekanslern.se ) I mean, wasn't she investigating why prosecutor Maria Kjellstrand illegally released aspects of the Assange file to the Swedish tabloids?"
"And that Tableaux Software (headquartered in Seattle, along with Amazon, isn't that were Micro$oft's located???)?
If you support Tableaux's pulling their software license from WikiLeaks, then give them a shoutout for support the Corporate Fascist State."
(first email is management) cstolte@tableausoftware.com efink@tableausoftware.com jmackinlay@tableausoftware.com
Paypal does not have the right to choose to do business with whomever they want. For example they cannot choose to exclude black people from using their services simply because they're black. They could choose not to do business with WikiLeaks if they had been say, found guilty of certain crimes, or if they were violating the ToS of paypal. As far as I can tell they haven't been found guilty in anything other than the court of public opinion, which holds no legal weight. If they are violating the ToS of paypal, then paypal is being quite hypocritical as WikiLeaks hasn't changed their mode of operation since the leak of the Iraq war documents.
As to the Assange rape case, that was a total fabrication trumped up by the two girls involved and then pursued by the Swedish Prosecutor:
Evidence Destroyed
Summary of events to date
In a later post you write that "most Americans don't appreciate what Wikileaks did". It's a bit presumptuous of you to speak for most Americans, don't you think?
Then I must ask: Do you live by it? Do you tell the truth, at all times, in your life? That doesn't just mean only saying what is true, that means never omitting important details, never keeping your peace when there is something that would be relevant to say. That includes things like white lies to try and make people feel better and so on. It also means providing anyone who asks with full and complete information on any subject they ask.
This is a rhetorical question because I know you don't, nobody does. There are plenty of reasons to keep secrets.
Now I'm not arguing about if specific secret should be kept or not, but it makes your "Revealing the truth is *never* inappropriate behavior," statement look rather silly.
So you seem to be proposing that not only should the government have a duty to protect the freedom to do something, they should have to finance your doing it as well? You seem to have a rather fucked up understanding of freedom. Being free to do something doesn't mean that doing it has to be easy, or that someone else has to provide you everything to do it, it just means that you have to be allowed to do it. This is how freedom in nations has worked, well, forever. So whining that "Oh you aren't free because it costs money," is silly.
Also, as this relates to this case, part of freedom means that your freedom can't step on the freedom of others. As the saying goes "Your freedom of speech ends at my door." You are free to speak your mind, but you cannot require me to listen to you. Likewise you cannot demand that I make my house available to you to speak in. You have the right to express yourself, but I can't be forced to help you if I don't want to because that infringes on my rights.
Same is true with web sites and companies. I don't have to allow you to speak on my forums, I don't have to host you on my servers. To force me to do so would be to interfere with my freedoms.
Freedom does not mean that you can do whatever you want, and it also doesn't mean that everyone has to help you do what you want.
Many of the "leaks" actually USEFUL to the US in terms of airing information it couldn't air otherwise, and criticizing human obstacles it cannot openly out.
Salting the docs with enough trifles to make them "embarrassing" would be wonderful for boosting their effectiveness.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We don't have to feel shame for we aren't the ones who have done this.
You did this - Iraq, Abu Graib, Gitmo, the 'rendition' of political prisoners, the cluster bombing of villages, members of your government making death threats against innocent people (Julian Assange) with no legal action taken, on the basis that 'his' organisation revealed some truths that were embarrassing. You sat by silently while it went on in your name. These atrocities are now part of the US legacy - and to the extent that you could have done something about it and didn't they are your legacy too. That's the point - you can't be proud of the long gone legacy that you didn't participate in and cannot influence, and not be ashamed of the recent legacy that you, in a small way, were part of.
The ones who should feel shame are the progressives/socialists who have been busily destroying our freedoms and sense of love for our country for more than 100 years and lying about what they are doing every step of the way.
I see. Do Palinisms come in pill form now - making them easier to swallow? Socialism isn't what you think it is, and your freedoms haven't been taken away by socialists - but rather by the corporate hand that steers the actions and positions of your faux representatives in the government. Including Tea Partiers - the same thing, but with different spin.
We have to feel, and act on, our sense of responsibility we have in the governing of our own country, and the sense of the debt of honor we owe our founders. But, we can still derive pride that we are a part of something that has done such a great thing, if we are willing to fight to return our country to its founding principles. I am. How about you? If not, then you do need to feel a sense of shame until you decide your country's founding ideals are something worth fighting for.
Then get on with it. A good place to start would be to abandon the notion that the US is somehow different from the rest of the world. This creates a phlegmatic atmosphere - the delusion that somehow, a thread of underlying decency will shine through eventually if we trust the American Ideal and ignore the atrocities of the recent past. The founding principles of your country have been turned into a mythology that your oppressors and their mouthpieces use to stop you acting against them.
Merchant accounts in Australia are actually pretty reasonably priced. The amount we pay sure buys us the peace of mind that a non-bank-pretending-to-be-a-bank can't just freeze our accounts and withhold our money.
PayPal's often looked down upon as being used by "unprofessional" vendors. By processing transactions directly, you're often also improving your company's image in your customer's minds.