The bankers' blockade of WikiLeaks must end
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/bankers-wikileaks-free-speech
Whether you support WikiLeaks or not, the blockade by Visa, Mastercard,
Paypal and others is a sinister attack on free speech
*
o
* James Ball <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jamesball>
*
o James Ball <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/jamesball>
o guardian.co.uk <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>, Monday 24 October
2011 11.30 EDT
o Article history
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/24/bankers-wikileaks-free-speech#history-link-box>
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Julian Assange has announced that WikiLeaks will suspend operations
until the banking blockade is lifted. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty
Images
In December 2010 three of the world's biggest payment providers, Visa,
Mastercard and Paypal, cut off funding to WikiLeaks. Ten months later,
Julian Assange has announced the whistleblowing site will suspend
operations
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/oct/24/wikileaks-suspends-publishing?newsfeed=true> until
the blockade is lifted – and warned WikiLeaks does not have the money to
continue into 2012 at current levels of funding.
On the surface, it appears as if the bankers' blockade – encouraged by
several US senators, including Joe Lieberman – may have come close to
accomplishing its goal. WikiLeaks is, for now, silenced – though not
before publishing the full cache of 251,000 diplomatic cables, and the
files of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/series/guantanamo-files-documents>.
The real picture is murkier. As Reuters journalist Mark Hosenball noted
at the WikiLeaks press conference, it's not clear exactly which
operations WikiLeaks has to suspend: WikiLeaks has not released a single
file since the publication of the Guantánamo Bay material – obtained
independently by the Guardian and New York Times – in April. The site's
primary submissions system has been offline since Daniel Domscheit-Berg
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/10/wikileaks-legal-action-daniel-domscheit-berg> and
others walked away from WikiLeaks in the summer of 2010. Assange says a
replacement will be online by the end of November.
Assange also claims WikiLeaks has over 100,000 documents waiting to be
released – but this claim might not bear scrutiny. WikiLeaks has
previously been publicly criticised for claiming to hold five million
documents when in reality it did not, by John Young of Cryptome.org
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20011106-281.html>, in whose name the
WikiLeaks website was originally registered.
In reality, WikiLeaks' cupboard presently stands almost bare: Assange
has laid the responsibility for the non-appearance of a much-heralded
cache of documents relating to Bank of America on sabotage by
ex-employees. However, sources close to the site believe the real issue
is more mundane: journalists at more than one financial outlet have been
given access to review the material, and found nothing of interest.
WikiLeaks' financial claims are similarly questionable. Assange declared
the site will need $3.5m to continue operations at their current level.
Questions as to who needs $3.5m to publish nothing new in six months
aside, this figure is highly dubious.
In 2010, when the Collateral Murder video
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/apr/08/wikileaks-collateral-murder-video-iraq> was
published (and a crew flown to Iraq), the Afghan and Iraq war logs were
released, and the massive cache of diplomatic cables was unveiled to the
world, WikiLeaks spent just €400,000. Given Assange also requested – but
was refused
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/02/why-i-had-to-leave-wikileaks> –
access to WikiLeaks funds towards his bail surety, WikiLeaks' track
record on financial claims is also not unblemished.
So given WikiLeaks' status as an unreliable purveyor of financial
information, and given its operations might have crashed to a halt with
or without financial restrictions, is the banking blockade a mere
non-issue? In short, it is not. The banking blockade against WikiLeaks
is one of the most sinister developments in recent years, and perhaps
the most extreme example in a western democracy of extrajudicial actions
aimed at stifling free speech – made all the worse by the public support
of numerous people sitting in the US House of Representatives.
Payment companies representing more than 97% of the global market have
shut off the funding taps between WikiLeaks and those who would donate
to it. Unlike many of the country's leading corporations, WikiLeaks has
neither been charged with, nor convicted of, any crime at either state,
federal, or international level.
When the Department of Justice mounted a lawsuit against Microsoft in
1998, the idea that payment companies might cut it off due to state
disapproval would rightly have been seen as ludicrous and illiberal. Yet
when payment companies do exactly this to WikiLeaks, who have never
appeared in court opposite the US state, many tacitly accept the action.
Visa, Mastercard and Paypal are none-too-choosy about who they provide
payment services for. Want to use your credit card to donate to the Ku
Klux Klan? Go right ahead. <http://kkk.bz/?page_id=342> Prefer to
support the English Defence League? Paypal will happily sort you out
<http://englishdefenceleague.org/>. Prefer to give cash to Americans for
Truth about Homosexuality, who oppose the "radical homosexual agenda"?
Feel free to use your Visa, Mastercard or Paypal
<http://americansfortruth.com/donate/>.
Visa and Mastercard are already inescapable. As the world becomes
ever-more digital, and cash continues its journey to obsolescence, they
will become still more pervasive. If they are allowed to cut off payment
to lawful organisations with whom they disagree, the US's first
amendment, the European convention on human rights' article 10, and all
other legal free speech protections become irrelevant.
Those who value free expression, whether they like WikiLeaks or loathe
it, should hope it wins its current battle.
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