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.'"

Comments

Sauce for the gander

[Joce640k]

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...?

Re:Sauce for the gander

[devbox]

Paypal did the same to cryptome.org, however they later reactivated the account. However, now this is "official" announcement on their blog, so I'm not sure it will happen this time.

I guess leaking secrets and wrongdoing is all ok until it's about you or your country.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[Anonymous Coward]

>IT IS A DEMOCRACY
yeah, i mean, come on, we have TWICE as many political parties as the soviet union did

all we have to do is vote for the guy who isn't a corrupt asshole, and everything will be fine

Re:Sauce for the gander

[Kagura]

"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."

There are lots of Paypal horror stories, and Paypal is clearly a bank that is not a bank which gives them way too much power to do whatever they like.

But come on Slashdot, you are clearly trolling your userbase... and I guess I responded.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[ultranova]

There's a world of difference between "secrets and wrongdoing" and "privacy and discretion."

Yes, and it's pretty hard to argue that documents written by state employees on behalf of their employer would fall under privacy.

Accused rapist Assange* asked for and then published what amounts to the private correspondence of American ambassadors... something that on a long enough timetable is made public as a route matter ANYWAY.

It amounts to business correspondence. And you know perfectly well that the rape charges are almost certainly false, so stop with the mud-slinging already - it does nothing but makes the US look even more pathetic than it already does.

(*: If he's innocent, he can go back and defend himself. If he's innocent, he has little reason not to and a big scary reason to do so... namely, to clear his and wikileaks' names.)

If he's innocent, and goes back to Sweden, there's a pretty good chance they'll deport him to the USA. They've been their lapdogs of late.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[drinkypoo]

There's a world of difference between "secrets and wrongdoing" and "privacy and discretion." Accused rapist Assange* asked for and then published what amounts to the private correspondence of American ambassadors... something that on a long enough timetable is made public as a route matter ANYWAY.

Wow, you are human slime, doing the establishment's job for it. I believe we call such a person a "useful idiot". Assange is accused of continuing to have sex with someone after a condom broke, someone who went out the next morning, bought him breakfast, and brought it back. You're a fucking evil piece of shite to actually even bring that into the conversation.

(*: If he's innocent, he can go back and defend himself. If he's innocent, he has little reason not to and a big scary reason to do so... namely, to clear his and wikileaks' names.)

You know what makes it scary? That the mere accusation is enough to convince many people that you've committed the crime. I sincerely fucking hope it happens to you, and soon.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[flyingsquid]

I think what people are overlooking is that Wikileaks has gone well beyond just acting as a whistleblower.

If their efforts focused solely on releasing evidence of crimes and abuses of power, then I think they would be tolerated. But the vast majority of the material that's been released shows no evidence of any government abuses, so its release serves only to hurt U.S. diplomatic relations without actually shedding light on any crime. That's the issue here.

Releasing that stuff doesn't fight against injustice, it just makes it hard for U.S. diplomats to do their jobs if they can't speak candidly in private. That does a hell of a lot more to hurt U.S. diplomatic efforts than Al Qaeda blowing up a couple of our embassies in Africa. And while we have a right to know what's going on in our government, at some point that right is overridden by the need to keep other people in the dark, including our frenemies like Russia and China, and outright enemies such as Iran, North Korea, and yes, the Taliban. I guarantee you that all of them are right now working overtime reading through these communications.

It's one thing to target criminals, it's quite another to start throwing hand grenades into a crowded room because there might be a criminal in there. Well, Wikileaks has taken the hand-grenade approach to fighting injustice, and the good done by the scandals exposed is going to be outweighed by all the damage. That's turned the moderates against Assange. I don't think that Amazon or PayPal ditched him because he was a costly inconvenience- I think that the people in charge genuinely felt that they are genuinely against what he was doing.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[turbidostato]

"the vast majority of the material that's been released shows no evidence of any government abuses"

There's more on the "abuse" word than "plain illegal", specially with respect to politics. If there's really no government abuses, why all the airing? Can it be because at least some people found the data supportive of at least questionable practices? And if it's indeed questionable practices at least for somebody, how can't it be considered whistleblowering?

Re:Sauce for the gander

[DELNI-AA]

Well, I terminated both my account at PayPal and Amazon today

That's called voting with my feet

Think you guys in the US should watch out for your free speech rights; doesn't sound good when Library of Congress starts to block sites; sounds more like China to be honest.

Re:Sauce for the gander

[nospam007]

Not much. The US embassy did illegal video-surveillance in the street where the embassy is located, we were told that 20 US nukes are 30 miles from here and the Prime-minister was 'shocked' according to his own words, but he's a Christian-Socialist, they are easily shocked.

Rather symbolic isn't it?

[Haedrian]

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....

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[Mindcontrolled]

So, journalism is only journalism when you approve of the content? Does that extend to all press or is this just your special "lex wikileaks"? Freedom of the press, yes or no?

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[darjen]

If the government threatened to shut down your business because you were supporting Wikileaks, you would probably cave too. The real issue here, as always, is government pressure and the power of the state.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[Mindcontrolled]

What in high heavens has the ego of Assange to do with anything? You are just taking part in the good old character assassination campaign. They got material, they published the material, they are journalists. Freedom of press exists outside of your personal stamp of approval - thank god.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[ToasterMonkey]

Wikileaks, which is revealing the truth about governments and therefore aiding (in a way) the democratic process

How have they done either? What is your truth? Isolationism? What would you do at the reigns of a nation? "Please stop?", "They're all nuts, close all our windows!"

The truth is, most people continue to not understand politics, local and especially international. Just as "assist ugly nation X suppress worse nation Y" doesn't mesh with anyone's rose colored view of the world, "congressman from state X brings huge contract to state X" is met with "gah, teh corruption!!!1"

Everyone wants to believe in some Us vs. Them fantasy world, where Them is fully cognizant, aware and intentionally driving Us in some direction against Our will, unbeknownst to Us, except for You and your favorite radio/TV Host.

Wikileaks can't fix that.

Seriously, how has Wikileaks "aided the democratic process"?

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[Mindcontrolled]

So what is the problem then with publishing documents that are basically just "gossip"? All harmless, isn't it? You can't have it both ways.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[gnola14]

Because what you consider "gossip" some other can consider a valuable information. It's not up to you (or Wikileaks) to judge whether one document is more important than other...

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[mrclisdue]

Because, by releasing *everything*, as opposed to just those 1000 or so that you, or someone else finds "damning", it becomes difficult to portray wikileaks as being *selective*, or showing bias.

This is not another blow for wikileaks, this is just another blow for paypal.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[lexidation]

I spent ten years of my life as a "real" journalist in several major US media markets. The primary difference between the news "we" presented and what's being presented via Wikileaks is precisely that Wikileaks allows more or less unfiltered access to the source material. Ask yourself: do you really want someone else selecting what's fit for you to read? Trust me, having unfettered access to original sources, so that you can independently develop your own take on what's happening, is infinitely better for you -- and better for society -- than having the news dished out to you by a "professional" like me in my former incarnation.

What's happening to Wikileaks is astounding and should be scaring the living shit out of each and every one of you. They have been transformed into a "criminal" organization in the eyes of many members of the public and many members of the mainstream media inside of a week. From the beside-the-point rape case involving Julian Assange to the loss of hosting, DNS services and, now, the possibility to gain funding. That's how easy it was to get the job done.

I've been an observer of political life, professional and otherwise, for more than forty years. Never have I seen an assault on free speech like this one. It doesn't matter what your personal view is on the wisdom of exposing the day-to-day minutiae of realpolitik. Free speech -- and your right as citizens to live under an open government -- are under attack. I can only hope people will speak up to defend them.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[geoskd]

Revealing the truth is *never* inappropriate behavior, only the underlying actions, that led to the "truth", are. If it would be embarrassing or politically dangerous to do something, then make damn sure its the right thing to do because one way or another you or your reputation will have to answer for it. Next?

As long as politicians believe they can get away with bad behavior, they have no real check against the drive to corruption. It is the fundamental function of journalism to provide the check against corruption. Without freedom of the press,whether you like what they say or not, there is no hope of keeping corruption from becoming pandemic.

-=Geoskd

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[drinkypoo]

The simple truth is that people who want to criticize Wikileaks will find justification to do so. The (ostensible) truth is that Assange has not released "everything"; otherwise he wouldn't have a doomsday file. That means that there HAS been some selection, thus there is clearly bias of some kind.

However, under this story I have seen Assange damned both for bias and for not having enough bias, so why even bother to defend him on this basis? You must go another direction, and argue that there is always bias, it is fucking impossible to avoid, and the best situation is when you simply know what it is, which enables you to make an informed reading on a piece of data.

Assange has shown himself to be anti-authority through his actions, and let me say, thank goodness. We need less big authority running around telling people what to do. Government's role should not be to force but to enable. That means making it possible for people to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, the government actively works in the other direction, routinely using government secrecy to hide wrongdoing of the actual constituents, the corporations. Look at the situation regarding milk labeling and rBGH, which has been outright proven to produce inferior product which is substantially, measurably different from milk not produced using the hormones. Yet the FDA continues to be its champion in spite of diehard evidence that it is harmful! Government actively works to hide evidence of wrongdoing that citizens have the right to know about, and it is only through eternal vigilance by people like Julian Assange that we are even able to find out about it at all.

Re:Rather symbolic isn't it?

[gclef]

Classified? You mean like the identity of Valerie Plame? Or the location of the team that Geraldo Rivera was embedded with in Iraq? Or, just to pull up an old chestnut, the Pentagon Papers?

News Flash: the media releases classified material *all* *the* *time*. Sometimes it's done with tacit approval (Plame), sometimes it's an honest mistake (Geraldo), sometimes it's actively pushing back on government (Pentagon Papers).

But, to think that the media doesn't publish classified information is, quite simply, wrong.

Freedom

[Stellian]

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.

Re:Freedom

[Mysteray]

Freedom works both ways. I give you the freedom of speech, but please allow me the freedom to not do business with you.

As a private citizen, I expect the right to be able to invite who I want, and not invite who I don't want, to my birthday party. And they have the right not to come. Or come and bring me a lousy gift. Or come and complain that I serve chocolate cupcakes instead of strawberry. Or whatever.

But when you go out into the community and open a business, you give up a bit of that right in the interest of others' rights of fair dealing. For example, it's been settled unequivocally that you can't run a lunch counter and refuse to serve blacks.

So, no, Amazon doesn't have the "freedom to not do business with you". They sell raw CPU by the cycle, disk storage and network bandwidth by the byte. In my opinion it is despicable for them to discriminate against customers based on political beliefs and vague innuendo of legal issues when no actual US law has been cited against their customer.

For a bookseller and publisher such as Amazon who's profits derive directly from first amendment protections of the press to actively show contempt for those principles is, IMHO, downright disgusting. Keep in mind, this is the company that's trying to sell us books they can later erase.

Wow.

[phyrexianshaw.ca]

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.

Re:Wow.

[Voline]

The divide has always been there. It is just now becoming visible.

Source?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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. See how economy and freedom are entangled

[unity100]

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 ....

Re:Yes. See how economy and freedom are entangled

[unity100]

You know, I never thought about how oppressed we really were until your post on this commercial, advertising-supported Web site cleared it up for me.

Grow up and get some perspective.

oh geee !!! now i see the error of my ways ..

so, if we were back in slavery days, and slave in a plantation owners' farm, and talking at night in the log cabin that the plantation owner stuffed us into, while eating the food that plantation owner had given us, it would be totally wrong if i said 'hey, we are slaves here, we have no freedom' ??

would you say, 'you know, i never thought about how oppressed we really were until your talk in this slaveowner-sponsored log cabin, eating this slave-owner sponsored meal', in that sarcastic manner ?

wake up and dont be an idiot.

Re:Yes. See how economy and freedom are entangled

[unity100]

While I agree in general with what you are saying, if you are using the assets of the "corporations which dominate the economic side," why would you assume to have any freedoms?

Should not the corporation that provides the service have a say in who can use that service and how? If not, what about their freedoms? There is an old adage about not biting the hand that feeds you, so this has been around a lot longer than the rise of capitalism.

a corporation becomes de facto government in a field of life, if that corporation or 1-2 others are de facto controllers of the means of life or services and products in that life.

basically, visa, mastercard dominate electronic payment. they are de facto governments of that field of life. period. if, they are let practice as they want, it means that they will effectively GOVERN that aspect of life, as they see fit.

that would be no problem, if visa, mastercard were democratic organizations, in which everyone had equal share. but, due to the principle of property and capitalism mechanics, mastercard, visa, any corporation that spans the globe can be owned/controlled by a a small group, or few individuals. even, one individual at times.

so basically, that makes that small group, or individuals or individual, the sole decision makers in regard to what happens in that aspect of life.

they basically become feudal lords of that field of life.

dont err and deceive yourself by thinking 'competition' -> if a corporation has become so big that it dominates a sector, it means that that corporation has the money and power to keep that position and outdo any competition. exceptions do not make a rule -> walmart is still walmart, visa is still visa, mastercard mastercard ....

so basically, what capitalism accomplishes in the LONG run, is feudalizing the economic aspect of life. technically, political aspect of life, remains egalitarian and democratic, and that supposedly ensures freedom. BUT, because you need financing power for EVERYthing including politics, inevitably the economic aspect of life governs the political, and carries the feudalism there, to the political life. and that is the ill behind all the issues you people are complaining about corrupt government, senate, congress in usa.

Amazon, Paypal, etc. is not stopping anyone from exercising their freedoms (most likely speech in the context of your post). They are just not choosing to let you use their resources to do it. If you want to set up your own printing press or the electronic equivelant, you are free to do so. If that is economically not feasible, that isn't because you don't have the freedom to do it, you just don't have the means.

oh yes they are.

they are choosing not to let me use their resources, but, it turns out that they are the controller of majority (dominant majority) of those resources.

that effectively ends up pushing me to, well, 'set up my printing press', or its equivalent. ironically, to be able to make my voice heard to the masses with my 'equivalent' services, i have to first BEAT those corporations so that i can actually access those resources they have been withholding of me.

so, you are basically saying, every person is free, but the PRACTICE of that freedom requires engaging in a feudal turf battle with the dominant lord in that zone.
BR. excuse me, but that kind of freedom, we had in medieval times. its 2010.

Re:3 cheers for Land of the Free!!

[electron sponge]

Yea! Aren't you PROUD to be an American?

Yes

Re:Thems fightin words.....

[electron sponge]

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.

Really?

[inotocracy]

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 placed a demand with paypal.

[unity100]

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.

Re:I placed a demand with paypal.

[McTickles]

In France it is illegal to refuse to sell something based solely on "I don't like them". You have to base you refusal to sell on a legal problem that a court of law could approve of.

Re:Innocent until proven guilty?

[Mindcontrolled]

Wikileaks is at war with your country now? Did you just declare the "War against Freedom of the Press"(TM)? Would fit in well with the War on Terrorism(TM) and the War on Drugs(TM).

In your face.

[unity100]

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

Re:Innocent until proven guilty?

[squiggleslash]

They are not pointing out specific wrong doings

They are, in fact, pointing out wrong doings.

(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

(2)theState Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA's kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

(3) the StateDepartment under Bush andObama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA's torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see ThePhiladelphia Inquirer's WillBunch today about this:"The day BarackObama Lied to me");

(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War "investigation";

(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

(6) "American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world" about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post's own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by theWikiLeaks documents;

(7)the U.S.'s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal -- a coup -- but the StateDepartment did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow theU.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

(9)Hillary Clinton's State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

(TotH to GG, as usual.) I appreciate why you believe what you wrote. You might want to reconsider your position given your primary source of news is from organizations whose allegiance is to parent corporations that, like Amazon, absolutely cannot afford to get on the wrong side of the government that regulates them.

Re:Thems fightin words.....

[Moryath]

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.

whats going on?

[Charliemopps]

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.

Re:Thems fightin words.....

[Mindcontrolled]

If the US moves Wikileaks on the list of terrorist organizations, I move the US on my list of fascist nations.

Re:3 cheers for Land of the Free!!

[suso]

Me too.

I see you're an AOL user. Didn't know they were still around.

i was looking for alternatives and I got this:

[mapkinase]

http://www.screw-paypal.com/alternatives/alternatives.html

Dated 2007. Anything newer?

Gutless companies? Political pressure?

[bradley13]

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."

Re:Thems fightin words.....

[Mysteray]

Here's Sen. Lieberman's site gleefully taking credit for the attack:
http://lieberman.senate.gov/index.cfm/news-events/news/2010/12/amazon-severs-ties-with-wikileaks

After reading press reports that Amazon was hosting the Wikileaks website, Committee staff contacted Amazon Tuesday for an explanation.

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.

"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the Wikileaks website. I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on Wikileaks' previous publication of classified material."

Clearly Amazon reported their compliance to Lieberman after they did it.

"The company's decision to cut off Wikileaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies Wikileaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material. I call on any other company or organization that is hosting Wikileaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them."

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.

"Wikileaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world. No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist Wikileaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials.

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.

I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with Wikileaks and what it and other web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information.

Is this guy channeling Nixon, or what?

Re:Innocent until proven guilty?

[squiggleslash]

I was just cutting and pasting, I'd have linked to the sources directly but I'm hungry.

In any case, the GGP didn't claim the issue with Wikileaks was the volume, it was that there were no specific wrong doings in the dumps. There most certainly was, as Glenn's excellent collection of links clearly shows.

If someone wants to make a case that making available a large quantity of material about government actions is wrong even if the dump demonstrates clear, serious, government malfeasance, then that's another issue. I'd take issue with that claim, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Re:Innocent until proven guilty?

[squiggleslash]

Wikileaks didn't point out any of those wrong doings, which is what a Whistle-blower site is supposedly supposed to be doing. pointing out wrongs that need to be corrected. Instead they just dumped the cables on the internet and real journalists dug through them to find a (very) few incidents of questionable activity.

This is not true, from start to finish.

Wikileaks worked with journalists and has only dumped the subset of documents that journalists consider newsworthy on the Internet. The full archive is, as yet, unavailable to the public. I believe an encrypted version is floating around, the famous "insurance policy" of Assange, but, well, encrypted is encrypted.

So:

1. Wikileaks did, indeed, point out those wrong doings, as part of publishing specific evidence to back-up journalist's claims about wrong-doings reported in the papers. They have not published anything outside of that.

2. Even if the allegations Glenn quoted amounted to the entire scandalous part of the dossier, I'd hardly describe these as "very few" or even "few" incidents of questionable activity. The US government interfering in the justice system of TWO foreign powers in an attempt to COVER UP kidnapping, torture, and unlawful death is a MAJOR wrong, as is condoning torture when administered by our allies. Lying in order to justify a war is a MAJOR wrong.

Do I really need to continue? Handwaving doesn't make these "very few" incidents of "questionable" activity. These are extremely serious issues that deserve public discussion - and in a sane world, these allegations would result in imprisonments of Prime Ministers and Presidents. In a sane world, our media wouldn't bury the stories for fear that its corporate masters would not get the subsidies, government contracts, and licenses they need to remain in business. In a sane world, you'd be outraged.

Amazon defends Paedophilia longer than Wikileaks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

The timing is supect...

[mswhippingboy]

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'

Re:Innocent until proven guilty?

[anagama]

We have complete need of this information. We live in a representative democracy. In order to fulfill our half of the obligation that entails, we need to know what government does and who does it so that we can take appropriate action at the ballot box. When the government only lies, we are deprived of our ability and right to choose our leaders for rational reasons. Wikileaks is the best thing to happen to America since the Revolution.

Re:3 cheers for Land of the Free!!

[scribblej]

You didn't think this through before you started calling people idiots. LOTS of folks have chosen to become Americans.

Re:3 cheers for Land of the Free!!

[pjt33]

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?

To all those who say "Don't blame corporations!"

[fishexe]

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?

Gah, they do so much more than throw out cables!

[Dr. Spork]

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:

• Wikileaks needs to receive leaks, for which it has to be a credible organization that's worth leaking to. One problem with past leaks is that the leaker's life was destroyed without the leak actually getting out. The alleged diplomatic cables leaker is in deep shit legally, but at least he has the comfort of knowing that his info actually got out. I'm sure we'll see organizations in the near future that pose as leak releasers, but really, they're just cops. Whatever you think of Wikileaks, they're clearly not the cops, and they will pass your leaks to the world.
• Wikileaks needs to have a pretty serious research arm so they can check the authenticity of the stuff being leaked to them. I'm sure that various governments/firms are, at this very moment, sending them falsified "leaks" in order to discredit them or to gain some sort of an advantage over their rivals.
• Wikileaks needs to have international security experts in its ranks, or at least reliable access to such experts, in order to know what information needs to be redacted. I can't stress this enough. Wikileaks works very hard at making sure the leaks are redacted in a way that they cannot be used to cause direct harm. This is not an easy job!
• Wikileaks needs to have open channels to the most respected global media outlets, so that they can consult with them and leverage their fact-checking and distribution resources. That's why the leaks are pre-leaked to selected global media sources.

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.

Wells Fargo harassment as well

[r7]

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.

Communication is in order

[sgt_doom]

I noticed this at another site and thought the poster made colossal sense:

"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