WikiLeaks payment service threatens to sue Visa, MasterCard
Visa.com crushed by Operation Payback
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WikiLeaks' Iceland-based payment processor says it will take immediate legal action against Visa and MasterCard for suspending service to the renegade whistle-blowing website, according to ZDNet UK.
DataCell EHF, which facilitates credit card-based donations to WikiLeaks, said it will file suit in the UK against Visa Europe, according to the report, which also said MasterCard would be targeted but didn't provide details. The complaint against Visa will seek an immediate injunction “to limit further damage.”
“Not being able to receive money from the public for a week can cost WikiLeaks seven-digit figures in losses, and DataCell as well, as it is unable to process any cards,” the hosting company's CEO, Andreas Fink, told the publication.
Fink's Wednesday announcement is the latest piece of backlash to come out of decisions by corporations to cut off services to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks supporters on Wednesday afternoon added visa.com to their list of websites suffering sometimes crippling denial-of-service attacks. At time of writing, the site wasn't available, and mastercard.com remained extremely sluggish.
Hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks claimed they breached 10,000 MasterCard payment cards, and offered screenshots as evidence, but its authenticity could not be confirmed.
Other sites, including those for WikiLeaks critics Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin, also came under attack, although they didn't appear to be plagued by long-term outages. PayPal, which has admitted it blocked WikiLeaks in response to State Department influence, also appeared to be working normally. ®
COMMENTS
@anonymous coward - fantasy land
"I hope Wikileaks gets everything they have coming to them... and more."
Me too. The Nobel would be suitable, don't you think ?
Logical
Objectively, neither WikiLeaks nor DataCell have been charged with anything.
Of course, Visa certainly has a shitload of provisions in their T&C to allow them to terminate an account whenever they want, without needing to justify themselves. Now, the question is, since they have such a stronghold on the market, is this abuse of monopoly?
The way I see it, it is. I believe any organization should be allowed to get paid by credit cards, like about anybody else, as long as it has not been declared guilty of something by the legal system. In that, I approve completely of the position of OVH, which is hosting WikiLeaks in France as long as the French justice says they cannot.
Is it just me
or is anyone else getting TOTALLY FUCKED OFF WITH THIS U.S. EXTRATERRITORALITY
... it's wikileaks this time, next time it' could be YOU
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