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PayPal Freezes Support Account For Bradley Manning
An anonymous reader writes "The online payment provider PayPal has frozen the account of Courage to Resist, which in collaboration with the Bradley Manning Support Network is currently raising funds in support of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. 'We've been in discussions with PayPal for weeks, and by their own admission there's no legal obligation for them to close down our account,' noted Loraine Reitman of the Bradley Manning Support Network (Support Network). 'This was an internal policy decision by PayPal. ... They said they would not unrestrict our account unless we authorized PayPal to withdraw funds from our organization's checking account by default. While there may be no legal obligation to provide services, there is an ethical obligation. By shutting out legitimate nonprofit activity, PayPal shows itself to be morally bankrupt.'"
I think you forgot the part about "innocent until proven guilty"? How about a fair trial first (which is what he needs the money for), THEN you can condemn him.
But not financially bankrupt!! Cha-ching!!
They are a bank, incorporated in Luxembourg.
Complaints are to go to:
http://www.cssf.lu/en/
I work for a non-profit that does nothing remotely controversial and we have had to deal with the exact same issue. PayPal forces EVERYONE to withdraw from a bank account by default. They make no distinction about who they are dealing with and they care less about non-profit status. Because they are a quazi-monopoly on ebay payment they pretty much force people to do what they want if you want to buy or sell on ebay.
If you want to be outraged, be outraged that the they use their monopoly status to force their fingers into bank accounts, not that the made some political move they actually didn't make.
We need more traitors like that. People should not be allowed to kill indiscriminately regardless of who they are or what their position is. Have you actually read any of the documents he leaked? Soldiers were gunning down whole families because there may possibly have been some terrorists nearby. If our country is going to be doing that then "We the People" need to put an end to it and we can't do that if we don't know what is going on. Afterall, "We the People" are the source of the government in the US, right? If not then worse traitors than Bradly Manning have already done their damage and the wrong traitor is on trial. How can we "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" when the crooks and murderers in charge may hide from us everything important that is going on?
Not at all. As someone who holds a US security clearance I am absolutely against what he is accused of doing; it was dangerous, irresponsible, and against an oath he took when he agreed to accept his clearance level. At the same time, I have very little faith in a government appointed defense attorney providing the best defense available, which I feel such a high profile, political case deserves. Considering the man has been in solitary confinement for nearly 6 months now without so much as a peep out of anyone representing him, I'd say my lack of faith is well founded. Even if you assume that the man is guilty (which is always a dangerous and stupid thing to do) he deserves the right to defend himself in a court of law and other people have the right to raise money for that defense.
Hilariously, Paypal was actually started by a libertarian as some sort of "resist the man and his fiat currency's dead hand on trade." kind of thing. Now it voluntarily licks the boots of those who would suppress the entirely legal efforts of an advocacy group to secure a man a fair trial(rather than the present detention-without-trial-of-indefinite-length...)
All hail the private sector, defender of liberty!
Or maybe a little googling:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/paypal-on-cutting-off-courage-to-resist-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-wikileaks/
Summary: CTR set their account up incorrectly. PayPal asked them to fix it. CTR refused and lied about the situation to the media.
Since dirt travels faster than explanation, PayPal will always look like dirt to someone who's encountered this botched story.
The summary says why they did it. Paypal asks that the account be set up so that Paypal can withdraw by default. They don't have an account set up for that, so they aren't holding to their part of the agreement. If they don't like those terms, they don't have to to business with Paypal.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's no problem, we'll just set up a legal fund and accept donations via Paypal
+1 Disagree
I work for PayPal, but don't have any knowledge of why this decision was made first hand.
I can say that in many past cases where a non-profit's funds were frozen, and everyone makes a stink about how evil PayPal is, it comes down to the fact that after the Patriot Act, PayPal is obligated by law to make sure non-profits file extra paperwork to prove their status. I think Xorg's funds were frozen for a while and everyone interpreted as PayPal hating open source, when in reality they just forgot to file paperwork.
This certainly could be PayPal refusing to do business with anyone associated with WikiLeaks after Anonymous tried a DDoS attack on api.paypal.com, but it could also be another technicality.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
"They opted to apply an exceptional hurdle for us to clear in order to continue as a customer,
Apparently, there's nothing exceptional about it; they require every account holder to link their account to a real bank account and permit paypal to access it:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/paypal-on-cutting-off-courage-to-resist-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-wikileaks/
Far as I can tell Paypal is just another pro-Establishment tool despite any intentions of its founder.
Founder's intentions mean squat with any company after it's been bought out by someone else.
Just look at Ebay: back in the late 90s when it was new, it was a great place for regular people to sell off their old crap, like a big internet garage sale. It had low fees, and few problems aside from scammers (a problem any time you deal with private sellers). Now it's been taken public, has a CEO, and is mired in greed and unethical behavior. Fees are ridiculously high, small-time sellers are screwed over in favor of "power sellers" who sell tons of Chinese-made junk, and scamming is still a giant problem because the company (even though it has far more resources than ever) refuses to do anything about it.
This is opinionated speculation only, but I really wonder what kind of favors or kickbacks Paypal is going to receive in the future.
My theory is that their purpose in scratching the government's back is to keep the government off their back when anyone complains about their actions, which would be illegal if they were chartered as an actual bank. So they get to act like a bank, talk like a bank, quack like a bank, but when they prefer to do something that banks aren't allowed to do (like freeze accounts arbitrarily), they can say "we're not a bank!" and get away with it because the government doesn't want to bother them after their help with "annoying" issues like this.