Wikileaks donation blockade by Mastercard and Visa and others.

[Peter Lemkin]

[URL="http://www.wikileaks.org/Banking-Blockade.html"]Banking Blockade
[/URL]
For information on how to beat the banks visit our donate page.
For further information on the banking blockade against WikiLeaks download this PDF.
A kit with full information on the blockade and tools to assist WikiLeaks through it can be downloaded here.

Created: 24th October, 1pm GMT

WikiLeaks has published the biggest leaks in journalistic history. This has triggered aggressive retaliation from powerful groups. Since 7th December 2010 an arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade has been imposed by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union. The attack has destroyed 95% of our revenue. The blockade came into force within ten days of the launch of Cablegate as part of a concerted US-based, political attack that included vitriol by senior right wing politicians, including assassination calls against WikiLeaks staff. The blockade is outside of any accountable, public process. It is without democratic oversight or transparency. The US government itself found that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a US financial blockade. But the blockade of WikiLeaks by politicized US finance companies continues regardless.



As a result, WikiLeaks has been running on cash reserves for the past eleven months. The blockade has cost the organization tens of millions of pounds in lost donations at a time of unprecedented operational costs resulting from publishing alliances in over 50 countries, and their inevitable counter-attacks. Our scarce resources now must focus on fighting the unlawful banking blockade. If this financial attack stands unchallenged, a dangerous, oppressive and undemocratic precedent will have been set, the implications of which go far beyond WikiLeaks and its work. Any organization that falls foul of powerful finance companies or their political allies can expect similar extrajudicial action. Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and other international NGOs that work to expose the wrongdoing of powerful players risk the same fate as WikiLeaks. If publishing the truth about war is enough to warrant such aggressive action by Washington insiders, all newspapers that have published WikiLeaks' materials are on the verge of having their readers and advertisers blocked from paying for their subscriptions.



The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has openly criticized the financial blockade against WikiLeaks, as have the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. The blockade erects a wall between us and our supporters, preventing them from affiliating with and defending the cause of their choice. It violates the competition laws and trade practice legislation of numerous states. It arbitrarily singles out an organization that has not committed any illegal act in any country and cuts it off from its financial lifeline in every country. In Australia, a formal, US triggered investigation into our operations found that WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange have no case to answer. In the US, our publishing is protected by the First Amendment, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by a wide variety of respected legal experts on the US Constitution. In January 2011 the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner, announced that there were no grounds to blacklist WikiLeaks. There are no judgements, or even charges, against WikiLeaks or its staff anywhere in the world.



The most powerful players in the banking industry have shown themselves to be a politicized arm of Washington. This collusion has occurred outside of any judicial or administrative process. The reach of these companies is global and violates the most basic principles of sovereignty. In Europe, VISA and MasterCard together control 97% of the card payment market. Alternatives have been aggressively opposed by VISA and US embassies. The European Central Bank announced plans in 2008 to introduce a European card system. A similar 2010 proposal in Russia together with a bill banning individualized VISA transaction records from going to the US were met with intervention by the US Embassy in Moscow. VISA calls itself the world's largest currency, but every transaction is controlled by the VISA corporation and the groups that influence it. VISA is a national security problem and a threat to state sovereignty. No state, individual or organization has full economic autonomy or privacy if they rely on VISA. It is able to provide significant intelligence on not only individual behaviour and economic relationships but on large sections of the entire microeconomy and the movement of labour.

The Bank of America is one of the principle promoters of the WikiLeaks financial blockade; it is also the creator of VISA, which until 1976 was called the "Bank Americard". In February this year, it was revealed in detail that the Bank of America had commissioned, through Washington lawyers Hunton & Williams, a consortium of three US intelligence contractors, including HBGary, to propose a systematic US $2 million/month multi-pronged attack to hack and smear WikiLeaks. HBGary was referred to the bank's lawyers by contacts within the US Department of Justice. The correspondence and proposals, which include plans to target journalists and lawyers supporting WikiLeaks, are now public. An extract from the proposal to sabotage WikiLeaks can be found on page 16 of plan 6:

Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions of sabotage or discredit the opposing organizations. Submit fake documents and then call out the error.
Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed not to be secure they are done.
Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward.
Media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of WikiLeaks activities. Sustain pressure. Does nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt among moderates.

In order to ensure our future survival, WikiLeaks is now forced to temporarily suspend its publishing operations and aggressively fundraise in order to fight back against this blockade and its proponents. We have commenced pre-litigation action against the blockade in Iceland, Denmark, the UK, Brussels, the United States and Australia. We have lodged an anti-trust complaint at the European Commission and expect a decision by mid-November as to whether the European Competition Authority will open a full investigation into the wrongdoing of VISA and MasterCard.



Our battles will be costly. We need your support. A handful of US finance companies cannot be allowed to decide how the whole world votes with its pocket.

Graph Showing Donations Successfully Transferred to WikiLeaks:

Financial Blockade: Chronology

- 27 November 2010: United States - US State Department intentionally and wrongfully imply (but do not formally state) illegal conduct by WikiLeaks in a letter to lawyers for Julian Assange, which they then immediately leak to the press

- 29 November 2010: Global - Cablegate publication starts with New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais & the Guardian, expanding eventually to over 90 publications in over 50 countries.

- 29 November 2010 and following days: United States - Assassination calls and declarations of war by US senators, pundits and media against WikiLeaks.

- 1 December 2010: United States/Global - Amazon stops hosting WikiLeaks

- 2 December 2010: United States/Global - EveryDNS stops wikileaks.org domain service

- 3 December 2010: United States/Global - Paypal discontinues service

- 4 December 2010: Germany - PayPal blocks Wau Holland Stiftung's (WHS, the foundation receiving donations for WikiLeaks) access to its account and freezes remaining money for 180 days. The money is released immediately by PayPal after a WHS lawyer intervenes.

- 6 December 2010: Switzerland - Swiss Post Finance freezes Julian Assange Defence Fund account in Switzerland

- 7 December 2010: United States/Global - Visa and MasterCard stop processing payments to WikiLeaks.
Germany - A letter from the FA Kassel (Kassel tax department) to WHS Foundation, which receives donations for WikiLeaks, asked whether donations have been transferred to WikiLeaks. WHS responded promptly, with data detailing transfers to WikiLeaks

- 8 December 2010: United States/global - Updated Statement about WikiLeaks from PayPal General Counsel

- 9 December 2010: Global - UN High Commissioner for Human Rights condemns blockade

- 12 December 2010: Iceland - Icelandic Parliament Considers Revoking Visa/MasterCard Licenses For Wikileaks Ban

- 15 December 2010: Germany - FA Kassel (tax department) announces WHS (the foundation that receives donations for WikiLeaks) charitable status may be revoked (pending investigation).

- 16 December 2010: Global - Amnesty International examines Human Rights at stake when blocking WikiLeaks payments

- 18 December 2010: United States/global - Bank of America discontinues any services intended for WikiLeaks

- 20 December 2010: United States - Apple removes WikiLeaks application for iPhones

- 21 December 2010: United States/Global - Western Union adds WikiLeaks to 'Interdiction List'
Global: UN and OAS Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression issue a Joint Statement Condemning the Blockade against WikiLeaks

- 26 December 2010: United States: New York Times Editorial Condemns Blockade

- 30 December 2010: Denmark/Global - Denmark-based contractor for VISA Europe and MasterCard, Teller AS, reports that WikiLeaks has not violated any VISA regulations, Icelandic or Danish laws.

- 1 January 2011: Germany WHS Foundation, which receives donations for WikiLeaks moves its office from Kassel to Hamburg

- 13 January 2011: United States - US Treasury finds no grounds to blacklist WikiLeaks

- 17 January 2011: UK - WikiLeaks Press conference with Rudolf Elmer

- 19 January 2011: Switzerland - Elmer is handed suspended sentence. He is the arrested without charge in connection with WikiLeaks press conference.

- 9 February 2011: United States/Global - Bank of America, who hired data intelligence firms HBGary, Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies, is revealed to have commisioned a proposal of a systematic attack against WikiLeaks. The proposal is leaked.

- 24 February/1 March 2011: United States Ethics complaint filed at the DC Bar against law firm Hunton&Williams and members of Congress call for probe into illegal conduct by the firm (hired by Bank of America to sabotage WikiLeaks and target WikiLeaks' supporters)

- 14 February 2011: Germany: FA Hamburg-Nord (tax department) drops Kassel investigation into WHS Foundation's (which receives donations for WikiLeaks) charitable status, but initiates a new investigation on different grounds.

- 9 June 2011: EU - WikiLeaks & Datacell announce prospective EU Commission Complaint against VISA and Mastercard

- 7 - 8 July 2011: Iceland/Global - DataCell: Credit card donation to WikiLeaks is accepted again but VISA closes payments hours after

- 14 July 2011: EU - WikiLeaks & Datacell file a Complaint to the European Commission for infringement of the EU Anti Trust Laws

- 25 July 2011: Switzerland - Rudolf Elmer is released after 187 days in detention. He had not been charged.

- 24 October 2011: Global - WikiLeaks suspends publication to invest all resources in fighting the blockade.
Germany - Decision on revoking WHS (the foundation that receives donations for WikiLeaks) status is still pending; WHS has been prevented from opening new bank accounts in Switzerland and Germany for the past 9 months.

[Peter Lemkin]

If WikiLeaks is dying, then the NYT is partly to blame
By Mathew Ingram Nov. 7, 2011, 9:35am PT

In a New York Times piece on the weekend, media writer David Carr argues that WikiLeaks is dying or at least on life support for a number of reasons, including founder Julian Assange's court case and a funding crisis that has caused the organization to put its leaking on hold. While the NYT piece makes it seem as though all of this is somehow a natural course of events and nothing to be upset about, the reality is that both Assange and WikiLeaks have been the targets of a sustained attack by the U.S. government and companies like PayPal and Visa. And if the New York Times is less than choked up about WikiLeaks' demise, it's because the organization is a competitor that was beating the Times at its own game.

As Carr notes in his piece, WikiLeaks has been under fire almost from the moment it first emerged on the scene last year with leaked information from the U.S. military including videotaped evidence that civilians were killed during an air assault in Iraq. That was followed by the release of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, which were provided by a whistleblower inside the Army, intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who remains in detention. Ever since that event, WikiLeaks itself has been under attack from the U.S. government, and at the same time Julian Assange has also been the subject of bad press surrounding allegations of sexual assault against two women in Sweden.
WikiLeaks is not dying of natural causes

Assange is now likely to be extradited to Sweden to face those charges, after a British court ruled last week that he could be delivered to the authorities there, and there is still a risk that he could ultimately be extradited to the U.S., which is pursuing a case against him and WikiLeaks for espionage related to the leak of the diplomatic cables. And meanwhile, the entity has been forced to stop its operations because it has run out of money thanks in large part to a financial blockade that includes PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, which have made it almost impossible for anyone who wants to support the organization to donate to it. As Carr puts it in his piece:

Although stateless and seemingly beyond the reach of the law and its enemies, WikiLeaks was, from the beginning, subject to a number of internal frailties and external vulnerabilities.

By frailties, Carr presumably means the personal quirks of WikiLeaks' founder, who became the public face of the organization, something that other members of WikiLeaks such as Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, an early supporter of the project who is one of the targets of the U.S. Justice Department's espionage case have criticized, but which undoubtedly got the organization a lot of publicity (both good and bad). And the "external vulnerabilities" must refer to being cut off by payment organizations and having its documents deleted from Amazon's servers, despite the fact that WikiLeaks has not been charged with any illegal activity.


Although there have been some protests from groups like Anonymous criticizing the payment blockade against WikiLeaks and the U.S. government's case against the organization, there has been little public outcry, despite the important principles at stake. And as programmer and visiting scholar at NYU's journalism school Dave Winer notes in a post, there has been little or no support for WikiLeaks from traditional media such as the New York Times. In fact, the NYT and former executive editor Bill Keller have done as much to torpedo Assange and WikiLeaks as to support them, despite the fact that the organization is arguably a journalistic entity just like the New York Times itself.
WikiLeaks is a journalistic entity and deserves our protection

That journalistic nature, which led journalism professor Jay Rosen to call WikiLeaks "the first stateless news organization," is likely a big part of the reason why the NYT and other newspapers have done so little to protest what is happening to the organization which as Dan Gillmor points out is a restraint on freedom of speech co-ordinated by private companies pressured by the U.S. government, based on allegations that haven't even made it to court. By becoming the default entity that anyone with secrets looked to for help, WikiLeaks represents a clear threat to the New York Times.

While both the NYT and the Wall Street Journal have set up their own "anonymous drop-box" programs in the hope of luring leakers away from WikiLeaks, there has been little uptake in those services in part because the terms of use (at least in the case of the WSJ) make it clear that anyone involved will be turned over to the authorities if there is any request from the government. Twitter at least fought for the rights of its users when the Justice Department came with a court order compelling it to release information about people like hacker Jacob Appelbaum and Birgitta Jonsdottir.

As Winer points out, the phenomenon that WikiLeaks created is unlikely to go away even if the organization itself dies. Although alternatives such as OpenLeaks are still in their infancy, the tools exist to replicate what WikiLeaks did, and others will undoubtedly try. But what's more important is that we have all (including the New York Times) failed to do what Jonsdottir has argued that we should do namely, support WikiLeaks and its mission of bringing transparency to government despite any misgivings we might have about Assange, because the principles at stake are so important.

[Peter Lemkin]

Freedom of speech should be free. It should not have a price tag, but it does in the world we live in, and it is a high one. For the course of its five year history, Wikileaks has been bearing the astronomical legal and adminstrative costs of exercising freedom of expression in the pursuit of justice. Now it needs your help.
Wikileaks' explicit mission is to publish material whose reform-potential is so great that powerful organizations and governments are willing to expend their resources to prevent that material ever entering the public record - to prevent you and I from ever hearing of it.
As a whistleblower organization, Wikileaks' primary function is to facilitate conscientious leaks. The first line of defense for powerful organizations is to cloak their wrongdoing in secrecy. Secrecy is achieved by using coercive means to deter the disclosure of information to the public. Individuals are often compelled to conceal evidence of wrongdoing within powerful factions because the personal consequences of doing so would be dire.
By providing - at cost - a secure and robust mechanism by which conscientious individuals can leak such materials anonymously, Wikileaks ensures that secrecy can never be so complete as to suppress evidence of the misconduct of the powerful. It creates, in effect, a safety-valve for secrecy, so that there will always be a conduit by which people of good conscience can get information to the public, at reduced risk to themselves. To date, no other single organization has performed this function as effectively, or as consistently.
The second line of defense, for powerful organizations, is to attack Wikileaks, and to prevent it from publishing the information it receives. The whistleblower group, therefore, draws upon itself the fire that would otherwise be directed at the whistleblowers whose identity it is sworn to protect. At various times in the past few years, this has taken the form of:
threats of violence against and the attempted intimidation of the organization and its staff and supporters,
the assassination of Wikileaks-affiliated individuals,
attacks on Wikileaks' information and financial infrastructure,
the attempted marginalization of Wikileaks and its supporters using organized disinformation
and
costly and lengthy legal battles in, inter alia, defamation, intellectual property and state secrecy law.
Drawing this fire, as it must, it is necessary for Wikileaks to defend against all of these forms of attack, in order to fulfill its mandate. This has proven to be the most egregious operating cost for the organization during its history.
A time-honoured strategy used by the powerful and wealthy to censor the press has been to abuse legal process. Corporations and governments will typically have vastly more resources at their disposal to engage in litigation than publishers and press organizations. It is therefore often a successful strategy to prolong litigation, so that publishers cannot afford to win on the merits of the case. An out-of-court settlement normally ensues in favour of the plaintiff, and urgent information is thereby consigned to the black hole of censorship, permanently excised from the historical record.
Unlike the traditional press, Wikileaks is designed expressly to deal with suppression efforts of this sort, and has successfully resisted all such efforts in the past. This is a costly business, and Wikileaks relies for its funding on the support of private donors: ordinary people like you and I. Because Wikileaks does not rely for funding on large organizations, it has in the past been more difficult for its enemies to exert their influence, as they might on advertisers, who fund the mainstream press.
Unfortunately, Wikileaks has made a lot of powerful enemies. Since December 2010, in the wake of its highest profile publishing efforts thus far, a new and worrying suppression strategy has been in effect. The very financial organizations across whose infrastructure private individuals make their donations have put Wikileaks behind a financial blockade. Bank of America, Western Union, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard have blacklisted Wikileaks, disallowing donations using credit cards or money transfer. It is no longer possible for ordinary people to transfer donations to Wikileaks. The effect has been - as reported in this press conference held recently by Wikileaks - to block over 95% of the donations Wikileaks needs to survive.
In February the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Timothy Geithner, concluded that there were no legal grounds for putting Wikileaks on its SDN blacklist. The actions by the blockading institutions are purely discretionary - having no legal basis - and seems calculated only to fatally marginalize Wikileaks. The blockade amounts to an unlawful use of financial power to silence an institutional actor for political reasons. This is an unprecedented attack on freedom of expression. If our financial institutions successfully manage to eliminate Wikileaks, an extremely worrying precedent is set for all organizations that rely on donations by similar means.
For the past year, Wikileaks has managed to survive on reserve funds, and, although crippled in many of its functions, continue with publishing. On the 10th of October 2011, Wikileaks announced that it had shut down publishing operations as a result of the financial difficulties it has suffered under the blockade.
In order to break the blockade, Wikileaks must mount legal challenges against the decisions of the financial institutions. Along with the Icelandic company Datacell, Wikileaks is pursuing a competition law complaint with the European Commission, which, it is hoped, will give rise to an investigation into monopolistic practices by banking institutions against Wikileaks and associated organizations. It is therefore necessary for Wikileaks to direct its remaining resources towards this end. The consequences of this bid will be wide reaching. If Wikileaks is not successful, we can expect to see other non-government organizations and human rights advocacy groups targeted by similar means when they attempt to stand up to systematic injustice carried out by the powerful.
This places Wikileaks in dire need of funding. It remains possible - although more difficult - to donate money to the organization. Alternative means of getting money to Wikileaks are listed here. A donation to Wikileaks at this time goes beyond support for the organization itself, and amounts to an investment in your own freedom to donate your money to worthwhile causes of your own choosing. It is also a significant investment in freedom of expression globally, at a time when that freedom is crucially in question.
Freedom of speech should be free, but it is not. Wikileaks' very future is now in jeopardy. There has not been a time at which Wikileaks was more in need of your support. Even a small donation will be unusually significant in furthering the cause of justice in the world. As independent supporters of Wikileaks' work, WL Central appeals to all readers to consider giving generously to Wikileaks in the days ahead.
Donate to Wikileaks [URL="http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate"]Here.

http://wlcentral.org/node/2329[/URL]

[Magda Hassan]

Making his television debut on ABC's QandA, Andrew Partos leads with two questions about Julian Assange to a panel that includes Australia's Attorney General Nicola Roxon and Jeffrey Robinson QC. If given a third chance to speak, he would have mentioned his conversation with Mastercard executive David Masters, regarding the Wikileaks blockade.
In this interview, Partos stands his ground against Masters, who denies he said that Mastercard Australia acted on instructions from Julia Gillard and the former Attorney General Robert McClelland, to block donations to Wikileaks. When this story broke just over a week ago, journalists flocked around Masters but completely ignored the other party, and the official statement was as expected. Masters did not deny that the conversation with Mr Partos took place; just what was said. In a case where it's one man's word against another, we feel it only fair to let both parties speak.

Andrew is a Holocaust survivor and prolific writer of letters to the press in the name of truth, justice and free speech. In the last six years, he has had some 600 letters published but claims to have written over 3000. For that reason he calls himself both the most published and unpublished! citizen in Australia. http://thing2thing.com/?p=1991

[video=vimeo;41113250]http://vimeo.com/41113250[/video]

What is the connection between MasterCard, ALP and the WikiLeaks Banking Blockade

by karwalski

On April 5 WikiLeaks supporters around the world donated $5 to WikiLeaks to beat the blockade, some people asked what else they could do to raise awareness and help beat the financial blockade that has been crippling WikiLeaks funding for over 500 days. And Some, like Andrew Partos took action and called MasterCard, one of the companies blocking funding to WikiLeaks.Andrew is an abundant writer of letters to the press in the name of truth, justice and free speech. You can find out more about Andrews story and the details of the phone call in this video by Cathy Vogan (link1) Andrew stated that he was able to speak with Mr David Masters of MasterCard (Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Affairs) after calling MasterCard's Sydney telephone number with queries about the WikiLeaks banking blockade. Mr Masters does not deny the conversation took place (link2) however Mr Masters does refer to a comment made by Andrew as a false allegation.Andrew Partos is adamant that It is alleged that Mr Masters said "MasterCard have every right to stop dealing with whoever we want to." "MasterCard acted on the instructions of the PM (Julia Gillard) and the Attorney general (Robert McClelland)"MasterCard's statements were as follows; "The decision to suspend acceptance to WikiLeaks was MasterCard's alone. Given the serious nature of the allegations and some of the public comments by senior elected officials from around the world (including the Australian Prime Minister and the then Attorney-General who indicated that there were questions about the legalities of WikiLeaks activity) we believed it was prudent to suspend acceptance. The allegation that we were instructed by the PM and AG is incorrect."A second statement was released in regards to whether there was any discussion at all between MasterCard and the government before the decision was made. "there was no contact at all between MasterCard and the Government before our decision."
I want to add one fact that is freely available via a web search and clicking onto the LinkedIn profile of Mr David Masters (link3). Mr David Masters worked as a media advisor for the Labor Party between June 1995 and November 1996. In March 1996, the Hon Robert McClelland became Labor's member for Barton in Sydney (link4). In addition Mr Masters has worked on had bounced between Visa and MasterCard multiple times in the last decade. Visa is another financial institution that blocked funding to WikiLeaks within hours of MasterCard.
Is it possible that Mr David Masters of MasterCard and Former Attorney General, Robert McClelland have not only know each other and kept in contact over the last 15 years, but also spoke to each other in early December 2010 to orchestrate the blocking of funds to WikiLeaks? [My bolding]
http://karwalski.wordpress.com/2012/04/3...-blockade/