Battle lines are being drawn as BOA, PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard have blacklisted Wikileaks by announcing they will no longer support Wikileaks transactions. This Wikileaks Blacklist is a rare look into the prevailing power structure at work. With the exception of Bank of America, these companies were not directly involved and could have remained impartial to the Wikileaks organization and it’s activities. They instead choose to support the secret keeping activities of an authoritarian oligarchy comprised of high net worth, military, industry and special interests.
According to the AP: “The bank [Bank of America] said in a statement that it believes that site ‘may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.‘ It joins financial institutions including MasterCard and PayPal that have stopped handling payments for the site.”
Bank of America has been implicated in massive fraud with cases being brought by the Arizona and Nevada Attorney Generals.
In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange said that his organization had obtained a 5GB hardrive from a Bank of America employee, but had been struggling with the best way to present the hard drive’s data.
Assange has stated that the data they possess exposes an “ecosystem of corruption“.
“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” he says, refusing to characterize the coming release in more detail. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”
Recently MasterCard and PayPal were recently the target of a mass online protest called “Operation Payback“ that many are erroneously calling hacking or cracking. The Facebook subsequently banned the page for the protest.
Hackers slowed Paypal payments and claimed to have crashed the MasterCard website in revenge for the firms suspending services for whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
Anonymous, understood to be a loose-knit group of internet activists, tweeted: ‘We are glad to tell you that www.mastercard.com is down and it’s confirmed.’
Another message read: ‘There are some things WikiLeaks can’t do. For everything else, there’s Operation Payback.’
And now comes word that Iceland may ban MasterCard from doing business in the country.
Representatives from Mastercard and Visa were called before the committee Sunday to discuss their refusal to process donations to the website, reports Reykjavik Grapevine.
“People wanted to know on what legal grounds the ban was taken, but no one could answer it,” Robert Marshall, the chairman of the committee, said. “They said this decision was taken by foreign sources.”
The committee is seeking additional information from the credit card companies for proof that there was legal grounds for blocking the donations.
Marshall said the committee would seriously review the operating licenses of Visa and Mastercard in Iceland.
