EFF Spinoff Pools Donor Dollars To Prevent WikiLeaks-Style Payment Blockades

nonprofiteer writes "Two years ago, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and Bank of America cut off all funding to WikiLeaks. A group of free information advocates wants to prevent a similar financial blockade on information from happening again. Daniel Ellsberg, John Perry Barlow, and EFF staffers are founding the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an org that will raise money and channel it to edgy media groups that might suffer from a WikiLeaks-style embargo. When donors give to the Foundation, they can choose to have their funding passed on to any media group under the Foundation's umbrella (currently WikiLeaks, Muckrock, The National Security Archives and UpTake). That strategy aims to make it harder to cut funding to any of those organizations, or any added in the future. And because the site is encrypted, donors who worry about being identified as giving to any particularly controversial group can do so without being identified. It's like Tor for charitable giving."

Comments

well thats all fine and well until..

[Anonymous Coward]

DHS comes after them for setting up a very al-qaeda style charity.

Re:well thats all fine and well until..

[Nerdfest]

Having it as something exclusive to funding "edgy" information sites is one thing, but if the money is pooled under the EFF it makes it look much more draconian if anything is done to it. It would be like shutting down the ACLU because you don't like them funding one particular group.

Spot the obvious problem

[pjt33]

What's to stop Visa and Mastercard from refusing to process payments to this new foundation?

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Even better, how long until some finds a way to use this new system to launder money, and then the feds will come down very hard on these folks.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[maroberts]

IIRC the payment processors have performed this economic blockade without due process or a legal ruling, so to clobber this organisation would take a court hearing, which may be what EFF is angling for.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[KiloByte]

Since its reputation is at stake, I guess the EFF will vet the organizations under its umbrella closely. So feds will come down hard, but won't at least be able to claim laundering.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[cdrudge]

There's nothing that prevents the credit card processors from refusing to process the payments. However unlike most of the organizations that have had trouble with processors in the past, the EFF is a legitimate charity with 501(c)(3) status with the IRS. It's hard to argue that an organization is engaging in illegal, questionable, or otherwise prohibited transactions on one hand, but have the government endorse it on the other.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[jythie]

Which, given how critical access to their services is, is a pretty scary situation. We have a small number of private entities who get to decide who, essentially, has access to 'money' and who does not. They need no court order, and are often willing to do what the DoJ asks as long as the volumes are small....they will not cut off big spenders, but poor organizations that could never afford to take them or the government to court are easy targets..

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[DRJlaw]

IIRC the payment processors have performed this economic blockade without due process or a legal ruling, so to clobber this organisation would take a court hearing, which may be what EFF is angling for.

Why would the payment processors have to provide due process or obtain a legal ruling? They're private businesses, not government agencies. The mere fact that they're large businesses does not mean that they are forbidden from behaving like any small business or individual -- if they do not want to do business with someone, they cannot be forced to. You should research the term "concerted refusal to deal," and then consider that there must be an actual prospective agreement, not merely independent action, before someone can successfully attack a refusal to trade on antitrust grounds. Hence decisions like the recent EC decision declining to go after the payment processors under competition laws.

The converse would be hilarious. Anyone boycotting a business or organization would have to provide due process and obtain a legal ruling that would permit them to refuse to trade with, say, Walmart. Hilarity ensues.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[ultranova]

The mere fact that they're large businesses does not mean that they are forbidden from behaving like any small business or individual

But it should. As it is, they wield orders of magnitude more power than a small business or individual, yet have no more responsibility. This is a recipe for disaster, and indeed we are all paying the bill for the utter irresponsibility of financial businesses right now.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[Luckyo]

Current situation: US unhappy with organisation, so it puts unofficial pressure on payment processors for payment ban. Payment processors comply.

EFF's idea: Increase amount of unofficial pressure necessary by making the fund for channelling funds. Idea is that political pressure necessary to get such a fund banned is much greater, and will exhaust political capital needed to put such pressure up very fast. It hopes to force US government to either take official way where EFF could assist with legal matters, or force the bar for the political pressure necessary to be too high.

Reality: Congress will probably pass legislation to make this pressure official and binding if this proves to be a problem in the way EFF envisions is, under the umbrella of "anti terrorism".

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[pla]

Not good enough. Where do you draw the line between large and small?

In 2010, Visa processed 3.2 trillion dollars per year. The US Federal gross receipts for 2010 came out to a mere 2.2 trillion dollars (receipts, not GDP which came to 14.5 trillion for that year).

You want a line? When you single-handledly take in more money than the federal government, you cannot just say no. And more practically, I'd set the line quite a bit lower than that, somewhere around 3% of GDP, or roughly half a trillion dollars - Which would coincidentally "catch" both Mastercard (at 2 trillion) and Amex (at 700 billion).


You have to actually think through these issues and justify the conclusion of why you apply the principle only to some and not to all

The entire banking crisis (and don't give me that shit about the credit card companies not counting as banks - It may have a legal distinction, but We The People don't care whether you call it a striped horse or a zebra) came about because large banks/companies/dontcarewhatyoucallthem, with financial activity best described in percent of GDP rather than in actual dollars, had the freedom to screw around as though they functioned as small businesses. When MomCo bets the till on the ponies, MomCo goes under. When JP Morgan Chase effectively does the same, the whole goddamned stock market takes a dive and grandma's (not to mention, my) 401k edges lower and lower and lower...


That pesky Fourteenth Amendment, you know...

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Sorry Mitt, but corporations ain't people.

Re:Spot the obvious problem

[aztracker1]

Bank Americorp owns Visa and MasterCard

This is a wonderful idea

[guises]

Obviously, the immediate worry is that the Freedom of the Press Foundation will just get itself on the banned list and they don't seem to mention this in the article. Since this is a US organization it would also be subject to National Security Letters, they also don't address this...

My enthusiasm is tempered a bit, but I think this is really encouraging.

Re:This is a wonderful idea

[3seas]

This ban was an error on twitters part, sorta. Apparently they received a lot of complaints/flags (guess who would do that - your tax dollars at work?) You can now follow @freedomofpress I just did...

Re:Convenient

[KiloByte]

The one thing that annoys me is that 8% "Operating Cost" that is deducted from your donation. Seems a bit hefty to me

Credit card processing fees are hefty. Add legal costs that will surely follow, and you can expect this to go up not down.

bitcoins

[vlm]

Sounds like they described the ideal business model for a bitcoin implementation. The EFF should accept bitcoins. Oh wait, they did, then the idiots stopped for no apparent reason.

Looks like a anti-design pattern of "not invented here". My gut level guess is we're about to see the release of a BTC fork called "effcoins" or something dumb like that. Exactly like BTC but it'll have a different name.

Don't get me wrong I'm a EFF cheerleader, love their goals and ideals, and I'm a past donator, they just really dropped the ball on this specific topic.

Re:bitcoins

[guises]

I'd guess that they stopped accepting bitcoins because they started receiving them instead of real money. It's all well and good to accept them as long as it doesn't impact regular donations, but if people start giving you something that volatile when they would otherwise be giving you something that you could definitely use it will hurt your organization.

Re:bitcoins

[Khashishi]

Yeah, but then you want to find a Bitcoin exchange that is more trustworthy than Visa.

Re:Bitcoin

[jythie]

Bitcoin just moves the problem, it doesn't solve it. At some point the recipient organization needs to convert Bitcoin back into currency in order to make use of it. It looks like this project keeps things in currency but scrambles the source and destination... not sure that solves the problem either but it is not quite the same approach.

This highlights a major issue doesn't it?

[erroneus]

Money is a medium that can be exchanged for goods and services. When government and, more significantly private enterprise, control who has access to money and by extension, goods and services, you will see right away the unbelievable amount of power that grants the parties who wield it.

So when someone points out that oil is traded in US dollars, it's a huge deal. It means the US and especially the private federal reserve bank along with the exclusive powers such as master card, visa and the like have enormous power over pretty much everything. It goes a long way to explain how things got the way they are and why governments around the world are bending to the will of the US and the businesses within.

This is only possible when the medium of exchange isn't based on something tangible... like gold or something like that.

If terrorism is defined as using fear and intimidation and a terrorist is a party who uses fear and intimidation to get their way, then I think the terrorists are most easily identified by looking at who and what inspires the most terror. "The control the money! All of it!" Controlling money controls everything and that's pretty terrifying.

Re:Can A Charity Give Away Its Money?

[geckoFeet]

I'm the treasurer for a small 501(c)3 (ITT4AS501(c)3), not a lawyer, but here's what our legal counsel has told us in the past: we can give money to whomever we want provided that the "regrant" is to further the goals of the corporation, as set forth in the corporate charter that was approved by the state. Depending on how the charter was drawn up, that can be either pretty broad or really, really, really broad. There are a few limits - if you start embezzling large amounts, or if most of the proceeds of the organization wind up in the pockets of one person, then the IRS will come sniffing around. But regrants in general are absolutely permissible.

Anyone know if a PAC would get around this?

[bigsell]

I wonder if a Political Action Committee could front the organization. Anyone know if that would work?

Make sure you DON'T

[Andy Prough]

Google "ACLU lawyer jailed". Wouldn't want to burst your bubble about the whole "untouchable" ACLU myth.

Re:Anonymous will take them down

[VortexCortex]

Geocities.