Financial woes may close WikiLeaks

[garbon]

http://news.yahoo.com/assange-financial-woes-may-close-wikileaks-130124068.html

WikiLeaks — whose spectacular publication of classified data shook world capitals and exposed the inner workings of international diplomacy — may be weeks away from collapse, the organization's leader warned Monday.

Although its attention-grabbing leaks spread outrage and embarrassment across military and diplomatic circles, WikiLeaks' inability to overturn the block on donations imposed by American financial companies may prove its undoing.

"If WikiLeaks does not find a way to remove this blockade we will simply not be able to continue by the turn of the new year," founder Julian Assange told journalists at London's Frontline Club. "If we don't knock down the blockade we simply will not be able to continue."

As an emergency measure, Assange said his group would cease what he called "publication operations" to focus its energy on fundraising. He added that WikiLeaks — which he said had about 20 employees — needs an additional $3.5 million to keep it going into 2013.

WikiLeaks, launched as an online repository for confidential information, shot to notoriety with the April 2010 disclosure of footage of two Reuters journalists killed by a U.S. military strike in Baghdad.

The Pentagon had claimed that the journalists were likely "intermixed among the insurgents," but the helicopter footage, which captured U.S. airmen firing on prone figures and joking about "dead bastards," unsettled many across the world.

The video was just a foretaste. In the following months, WikiLeaks published nearly half a million secret military documents from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a whole the documents provided an unprecedented level of detail into the grueling, bloody conflicts. Individually, many raised concerns about the actions of the U.S. and its local allies — for example by detailing evidence of abuse, torture and worse by Iraqi security forces.

Although U.S. officials railed against the disclosures, claiming that they were putting lives at risk, it wasn't until WikiLeaks began publishing a massive trove of 250,000 U.S. State Department cables late last year that the financial screws began to tighten.

One after the other, MasterCard Inc., Visa Europe Ltd., Bank of America Corp. Western Union Co. and Ebay Inc.'s PayPal stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks, starving the organization of cash as it was coming under intense political, financial and legal pressure.

Assange said Monday that the restrictions — imposed in early December — had cut off some 95 percent of the money he believes his organization could have received.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson defended the estimate as "conservative," noting that in 2010 the average monthly donation to WikiLeaks had been more than 100,000 euros ($140,000), while in 2011 the amount had fallen to between 6,000 and 7,000 euros.

Each company has given its own explanation for the blockade, expressing some level of concern over the nature of the secret-spilling site. WikiLeaks supporters often point out that MasterCard and Visa still process payments for fringe groups such as the American KKK or the far-right British National Party and that neither WikiLeaks nor any of its staff have been charged with any crime.

Assange said his group was being subjected to corporate censorship.

"A few companies cannot be allowed to decide how the whole world votes with its wallet," he said.

WikiLeaks recently organized a series of auctions aimed at shoring up its finances. Assange said Monday that generally his group had relied on small-time donations averaging about $25 to keep it afloat, but would now turn its attention to a "constellation of wealthy individuals."

He didn't elaborate, but Assange has several wealthy backers, including Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith, whose manor house in eastern England has been put at Assange's disposal while he fights extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.

A decision on whether to extradite him is expected in the next few weeks. Speaking to journalists after Monday's appearance, Assange put his chances of being extradited without the possibility of appeal at "30 percent."

Also looming in the background is a U.S. grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks' disclosures. Earlier this month a small California-based Internet provider became the second company to confirm it was fighting a court order demanding customer account information as part of the American WikiLeaks inquiry.

WikiLeaks' suspected source, U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, remains in custody at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

[Tamas]

 

[Admiral Yi]

I like the blockade language, very evocative.

Don't Euroweenie America haters know how to write checks?

[crazy canuck]

I like the blockade language, very evocative.

Don't Euroweenie America haters know how to write checks?

Yes but they have no ability to write a cheque

[HisMajestyBOB]

I still regret donating $10 to them very early on, before the Manning thing and back when I naively assumed it was more for people in dictatorships/corrupt countries to leak things than to get Assange's hate America boner on.

[DGuller]

Seems like capitalism at work. 

[DGuller]

I still regret donating $10 to them very early on, before the Manning thing and back when I naively assumed it was more for people in dictatorships/corrupt countries to leak things than to get Assange's hate America boner on.

Yeah, it seems like such a waste.  WikiLeaks could've been a groundbreaking site that changed the world for the better, but Assange just had to lose his marbles.

[Neil]

Martinus is going to go apeshit.

[Sheilbh]

I still regret donating $10 to them very early on, before the Manning thing and back when I naively assumed it was more for people in dictatorships/corrupt countries to leak things than to get Assange's hate America boner on.

Yeah, it seems like such a waste.  WikiLeaks could've been a groundbreaking site that changed the world for the better, but Assange just had to lose his marbles.

I do wonder how much of their revenue's been going to his legal fees fighting the Swedish rape charges.

[Razgovory]

I still regret donating $10 to them very early on, before the Manning thing and back when I naively assumed it was more for people in dictatorships/corrupt countries to leak things than to get Assange's hate America boner on.

Yeah, it seems like such a waste.  WikiLeaks could've been a groundbreaking site that changed the world for the better, but Assange just had to lose his marbles.

If he wasn't such a vindictive attention whore, he'd be probably be doing okay.  He seemed to use this mostly for his own celebrity.  His hamfisted editorializing didn't impress me either.

[Razgovory]

I still regret donating $10 to them very early on, before the Manning thing and back when I naively assumed it was more for people in dictatorships/corrupt countries to leak things than to get Assange's hate America boner on.

Yeah, it seems like such a waste.  WikiLeaks could've been a groundbreaking site that changed the world for the better, but Assange just had to lose his marbles.

I do wonder how much of their revenue's been going to his legal fees fighting the Swedish rape charges.

Or his globetrotting, and very conspicuous "hiding" from the US.

[Valdemar]

While I deplore WikiLeaks and Assange I find it troublesome that financial companies decide on censorship without any sort of trial or sentence.

What gave the companies the right to decide what is a worthwhile cause to donate money to? Seeing they don't extend their censorship along any oerreaching morale guideline and hit other troublesome organisations it would seem they target WikiLeaks solely for politcal reasons. Is that the job of such organisations?

OTOH, they are private entities and as such at liberty to deny doing business with any customer they chose. Problem is they are not denying all transaction from a given subset of customer, only some of the given customer's transactions. So a customer can try two donations, one to Wikeleaks, and one to KKK, one will go through and one will not.

How very odd, private censoring.

V

[Razgovory]

How can a company put someone on trial?

[garbon]

While I deplore WikiLeaks and Assange I find it troublesome that financial companies decide on censorship without any sort of trial or sentence.

What gave the companies the right to decide what is a worthwhile cause to donate money to? Seeing they don't extend their censorship along any oerreaching morale guideline and hit other troublesome organisations it would seem they target WikiLeaks solely for politcal reasons. Is that the job of such organisations?

OTOH, they are private entities and as such at liberty to deny doing business with any customer they chose. Problem is they are not denying all transaction from a given subset of customer, only some of the given customer's transactions. So a customer can try two donations, one to Wikeleaks, and one to KKK, one will go through and one will not.

How very odd, private censoring.

V

I like how you as questions and then answer them in the next paragraph.

[The Brain]

OTOH, they are private entities and as such at liberty to deny doing business with any customer they chose. Problem is they are not denying all transaction from a given subset of customer, only some of the given customer's transactions. So a customer can try two donations, one to Wikeleaks, and one to KKK, one will go through and one will not.

So?

Anyone can still donate to WikiLeaks. Just use the state system: cash. Not the private systems.