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Swedish Pirate Party Presses Charges Against Banks For WikiLeaks Blockade
davecb writes "Rick Falkvinge reports today that the Swedish Pirate Party has laid charges
against at least Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal before the Finansinspektionen for refusing to pass on money owed to WikiLeaks. The overseer of bank licenses notes (in translation) that 'The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed.'"
I look forward to seeing Paypal get a taste of having to follow rules.
What? It's not like the pirate party decide the outcome.
What they have done is of course to ask Finansinspektionen to investigate it and is the organization which look after the financial markets in Sweden. I assume the actual charges will go from someone with the authority to do so. Not from the Pirate party.
There was no legal basis for these payment processors to refuse to transfer payments to wikileaks -who had not and have not (as far as I know) been identified as a terrorist or organized crime group....
the payment processors were just sucking up to the corporatist powers and should be punished for refusing to allow legal commerce and monetary transactions -of course they were probably leaned on at the time by the state department or someone and threatened with sanctions or aiding and abetting or giving comfort or some BS
the ultimate end to this would be refusing to send donations to the EFF, ALCU, greenpeace, PETA (OK I know the last two are borderline hippie/batshit crazy) and other radical and democratic groups....so as not to rock the plutocratic ship of state.
-I'm just sayin'
The headline suits from bad translation. What they did is filed a complaint.
The headline suits from bad translation. What they did is filed a complaint.
If the official is not mis-quoted, then the complaint is as good as pressing charges. From TFA:
Johan Terfelt, who oversees the Finansinspektionen unit for payment providers, confirms that the authority has received the filed charges ....
He also states there's no room at all for arbitrary randomness, and gives a careful hint at a possible outcome: "The law states, that if there aren't legal grounds to deny a payment service, then it must be processed."
I am fairly certain no one had any legal grounds to deny payments to Wikileaks. How could they?
Well, the legal grounds amount to some nice men in dark suits told Visa that since wikileaks were terrorists, they could possibly run into some unspecified trouble if they paid that money.
Make no mistake about it, it was pressure applied to these companies to stop payment, and VISA may find themselves in the middle of two governments who differ in their interpretation of what is required here.
One side will say they were funding terrorism, and the money needs to be withheld (if not seized), and the other side will say there isn't sufficient legal basis to withhold.
Bring on the popcorn.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Good journalists report what governments don't like reported. Wikileaks did nothing more than journalism. It was a good thing, it gave strength to the people wanting democracy in the African Spring.
The attacks on Wikileaks and on Assange (no I don't accept the rape charges are anything other than malicious) amount to attacks on journalism.
Dollars to doughnuts finansinspektionen will conclude that no one in sweden has done anything wrong...
Since Wikileaks has its headquarters in Sweden (specifically BECAUSE if its strong journalistic shield laws), and no doubt tried to collect the money there, one end of the transaction is under Sweedish banking law. No doubt some of their contributors are also making donations in Sweden, putting the entirety of those transactions under Swedish law.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I notice that again it takes the Pirate Party to stand up against these bullies. And still there are people that cannot see further than the name, or assert that it's just people "wanting to download stuff for free".
Hats off to the Swedish Pirate Party!
Thats the fun test. A US multinational financial services corporation is offering a world wide product. :)
Think about Cuba- your Canadian and European banks credit card is fine.
This EU probe could bring a lot of US banking laws to the surface
If they win - wikileaks gets funding in a part of the world.
If they lose - a cute multinational financial services corporation is found to be a just another US financial services corporation...
A lot of tourist and family funds could be lost to other financial corporations.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Imagine if Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, failed to pass money sent to the New York Times for their paywall, because New York Times had published leaks about President Assad's attacks on civilians?
You see what I've done there, I've substituted one news reporting company 'New York Times' for another 'Wikileaks' and one government 'Syria' for another 'USA'.
Reporting leaks is not illegal, it's journalism, and Syria might not like it, and they may try to attack the journalists by cutting off money, but it would be WRONG FOR VISA AND MASTERCARD to go along with Syria's wish and cut off money to the New York Times.
If Visa and Mastercard are agents of the USA government, then can we continue to let them operate in Europe for example. They'll be leaking private transaction data, blocking transfers and generally acting against the laws we have.
I'm old, I remember Nixon and his attacks on the Washington Post over the Watergate leaks.
https://ssl1.washingtonpost.com/opinions/woodward-and-bernstein-40-years-after-watergate-nixon-was-far-worse-than-we-thought/2012/06/08/gJQAlsi0NV_story.html
VISA Europe is a membership association owned entirely by its membership (which are European Banks, including Swedish banks)
FWIW, they are not the same company as VISA, Inc. which operates in the US. The US division was sold off in an IPO years ago
You're creating an imaginary distinction where there is none.
You're defining journalism as reporting + censorship. It isn't the censorship part that makes it journalism, it's reporting part.
Good journalism is reporting the stuff warts and all. Wikileaks 100% documents dumps, is the best kind of journalism. Uncensored, full naked truth.
Propaganda is where you only report the stuff approved by governments. You fail because you're praising New York Times partial government censorship.
That's the problem with everyone who depends on international law for anything.
International Law between two sovereigns is precisely what the two sovereigns say it is. They are allowed to change their minds. Groups like the EU work because the sovereigns have added EU laws to their domestic legal codes, not due to some complicated theory of international law.
This is the big difference between the US and the EU. The US got stronger protection of freedom of speech... from the government. The EU got stronger protection of freedom... from business. In the US, your hate group is safe from government interference and it is totally by accident that all the big corps seem to follow party lines. But hey, no censorship from the state, you just won't be able to bank, rent, work or buy. But total freedom otherwise.
In the EU, hate groups are not as safe from state influence but most countries got a national bank that is obligated to give an account to anyone. Well until the right-wingers privatized them with "pledges" that no-one would go without a bank account... unless the bank objected to them in some way or wanted more money for an account. But hey, you are free to bank with any bank, not their fault their are only a handful of banks and they all got the same policy. Dutch banks refused to bank for Martijn, pedo support group that promotes child love but not rape. The same banks do NOT cancel the accounts of actual child molesters. So according to Dutch banks it is okay to rape kids but not to talk about it. Same banks neither ban any hate group from using their services. Just pure coincedence that the government wanted Martijn gone and the banks wanted the same thing.
The A-Team had this as a regular plot, were a farmer or something was being forced out of business by restricting their access to say a sales platform or refusing to sell seed or other equipment. It is a ploy as old as time, you are free to buy your stuff elsewhere, just not from MY store and that other stores are not practical... well that is just to bad.
Real freedom comes not just from a line on a piece of parchment saying your are free to speak and think what you want but from the ability to EXERCISE said freedom. The right to own property is a big one in the west, it is one of the defining difference between capitalism and communism. Yet am I free to own property if nobody will sell it to me? Blacks in the US were legally allowed to buy a house LONG before they actually COULD buy a house if their white neighbors didn't want to. Freedom without the ability to exercise it, is meaningless.
The reason the EU used to have more protection in place to force essential services to serve EVERYONE is that we have had a far longer, history of NOT doing it. And well... done to people who got more of a say. "Kein Juden" was NOT official German policy for a long time, shops were free to do what they pleased just if they didn't do it, they windows would mysteriously be smashed in. The American south segregation was not entirely different in idea but its support was different and lets face it, on slashdot there are few black people, segregation happened to other people. The holocaust also but it is unthinkable to have a popular kids show with a car painted with the nazi flag. What flag is painted on the General Lee again? A flag that symbolizes what?
Exclusing undesirables is a very old EU practice, it practically defines the middle ages and even the enlightenment and then it culminated in the Holocaust and most human rights laws in the EU were written with that horrific image in mind. The US human right laws were written by slave owners whose own women couldn't vote. The US protects high level free speech for those who can afford it. The EU tries/tried to protect it for everyone, EVEN undesirables because the alternative... well... you know... the Germans had to be stopped from electing Hitler as their greatest German by excluding him from the list (despite being Austrian and the list allowing Austrians with would be like Britains biggest hero including Americans). Our old leaders had seen our worst and wrote laws to protect us.
The old Dutch Postbank (national bank part of the postal service including telephone service) HAD to give EVERYONE a bank account. For FREE! Yes Americans, reliable banking WITH interest and pay services. FOR FREE! ZERO COST. To ANYONE! And yet Yanks wonder
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Manning (or so the prosecutors say) leaked the information, not Wikileaks. That was illegal under US law, and the US has jurisdiction. Wikileaks, on the other hand, is not and has never been a US organisation, and are thus not under US jurisdiction. They are registered in Sweden, and I think their infrastructure is placed there as well, so the legality of whatever they have on their servers is a matter of Swedish law. After all, Sweden is a sovereign country, where US laws doesn't apply.
Wikileaks biggest activity was breaking US Laws on classified information, which is illegal in the US, which generally means that Sweden has an obligation to stop them.
No, Sweden has no obligation to stop them - just like the US isn't obliged to stop an American from doing something in the US that would be illegal in Sweden.
The US government was (and is) certainly a major force here. The trail is even easier to follow, if you look at the hosting. After the Wikileaks servers were initially overwhelmed by DDOS attacks, they moved to Amazon EC2. On 29 November 2010, Ms. Clinton stated that the US would "aggressively" go after Wikileaks. Two days later, on 1 December 2010, Amazon threw Wikileaks off of EC2.
According to the fine print in the Amazon Terms-and-Conditions, they can do this for any reason or no reason. Which is not unusual, but it *is* unusual to see a company actually make use of such terms. It is surely coincidental that, at that point in time, Amazon was completing for some pretty big cloud-service contracts with the federal government.
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