New Hurdles, Legal and Technical, for WikiLeaks and Its Founder
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: December 4, 2010
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LONDON — As the political storm over their release of 250,000 secret American diplomatic cables continues, the WikiLeaks Web site and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing new legal and operational challenges from Swedish prosecutors and from one of the online payment services that have been used to channel donations to the whistle-blowing organization.
PayPal, one of the most widely used online payment services, severed ties to WikiLeaks, following similar moves by the e-commerce Web site Amazonand the domain name companyEveryDNS.net. In a statement dated Friday, PayPal said that it had “permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks.”
It added that the action had been taken “due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity,” and said that “the account holder” had been notified.
WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed, on which Mr. Assange and his associates responded vehemently to the earlier actions by Amazon and EveryDNS, said in an early morning message on Saturday that PayPal had “surrendered to U.S. government pressure,” a charge that WikiLeaks had previously made in the case of the other Internet service suspensions.
Clicking on a PayPal donation link at the WikiLeaks Web site produced a notice stating that “this recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
Mr. Assange and his associates have been careful to disclose little about the organization’s finances, or the amounts of money that the organization has raised, but they have said that they have a diffuse online network for soliciting donations and channeling the money that is robust enough to withstand any attempt to choke its financial lifeline.
Attempts to obtain reaction from the Obama administration to the allegation that the United States was involved in a bid to isolate WikiLeaks were not immediately successful. Since WikiLeaks began releasing secret Pentagon documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq months ago, officials have said that the Pentagon and the Justice Department have been studying possible criminal actions, as well as policies to prevent future leaks of secret documents, but no punitive measures have been announced.
Within hours of Amazon’s action in denying WikiLeaks use of its online servers for posting the secret documents and other materials, Mr. Assange and his associates shifted to a new server in Switzerland, and a new domain name, www.wikileaks.ch. Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian and former computer hacker, has said that he is confident his organization can outwit any efforts by governments to shut down WikiLeaks.
Meanwhile, Mr. Assange continues to face the threat of arrest in Britain in a case of sexual improprieties being investigated in Sweden.
Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, said Friday that Marianne Ny, the chief prosecutor in the case, had distributed a newly drafted version of a European arrest warrant issued last week asking governments across the continent to arrest Mr. Assange and extradite him to Sweden for questioning in the case.
Two separate Swedish requests for Mr. Assange’s arrest, one through the 188 member countries of Interpol and the other through countries that belong to the Eurowarrant network, were distributed nearly three weeks ago, but only made public by Sweden last week. Mark Stephens, Mr. Assange’s lawyer in London, said Saturday that British officials had rejected the European arrest warrant on Thursday on the grounds that it lacked supporting paperwork. Ms. Rosander, the spokeswoman in Stockholm, said the warrant had been reissued with the requested documentation on Friday.
Mr. Assange has strongly denied the charges, and WikiLeaks has dismissed them as “dirty tricks” meant to punish him for his organization’s work.
Mr. Assange, who has not been seen in public since an appearance in Geneva on Nov. 5, is believed to be staying with friends somewhere in southeastern England, outside London.
Whether Scotland Yard planned to take action against him in the light of the reissued European warrant remained unclear on Saturday. Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 4, 2010
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the domain name company that cut service to WikiLeaks. It was EveryDNS.net, not EasyDNS.net. ( source: the newyork times)
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AFP/ GETTY IMAGES
Julian Assange has released only 0.2 per cent of the leaked material
ENLARGEWikiLeaks suffered the most serious blow in its struggles with corporate and official America yesterday when PayPal, the payments processing company, suspended the organisation's account. The move will have a major impact on WikiLeaks' ability to collect donations.
A statement by PayPal, which is owned by eBay Inc, said: "PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We've notified the account holder of this action."
Attempts to donate to WikiLeaks via PayPal yesterday were greeted with an error message. PayPal has been probably the most convenient way to support the organisation.
Mr Stephens also revealed some of the bizarre aspects of the Swedish prosecutor's action over charges against Mr Assange for rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. "Julian has been pursuing contact with the prosecutor," he said. "She has made no contact whatsoever... He has not been told the nature of the evidence against him."
He confirmed that Scotland Yard received the corrected arrest warrant on Friday, and expects it to take 10 days to be processed. Mr Assange is at a location in the Home Counties, which is known to the police.
Last night, WikiLeaks was still online, with wikileaks.nl functioning, but wikileaks.ch (owned by by the Swiss Pirate Party, a group of freedom of information campaigners) and wikileaks.de in Germany not responding. This is despite what appeared to be widespread, if not actually concerted, US efforts to hamper it, and extract some sort of revenge.
The PayPal action follows a spate of stingers thrown in the path of WikiLeaks by sundry US organisations. On Wednesday, Amazon.com stopped hosting Wikileaks.org after US Congress staff started asking the firm about its links to Mr Assange's site. The following day, another US company, EveryDNS, which provides free domain names, stopped directing traffic to WikiLeaks after cyber attacks by hackers.
WikiLeaks has also been brought down by denial-of-service attacks. In these, remote computers infected by rogue programmes bombard a website with so many data packets that it is overwhelmed. The attacks can be carried out by amateurs.
Then there is the political activity. The US is conducting a criminal investigation into the release of diplomatic cables, claiming they threaten national security and diplomatic work. In Washington, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Lamar Smith, says he plans to hold WikiLeaks hearings in January. Other legislators have talked of possible charges against Mr Assange, anonymous death threats have been made, and Republican Sarah Palin has said: "Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qa'ida and Taliban leaders?"
Beyond the inadvisability of giving unlimited access to diplomatic cables to plainly unreliable employees, the leaks so far have done remarkably little harm to the reputation of the US internationally. But the apparent marshalling of corporate America, assorted showboating legislators and, quite possibly, techno-savvy "patriots" acting as guerrilla deniers of service in an attempt to harass WikiLeaks out of existence may be what, in the end, does the real harm. The country's over-reaction is looking increasingly like that of a bully who, having had his nose put slightly out of joint, is determined to batter the upstart into a pulp. If America wanted to convince the entire online world that it has no sense of perspective, the past few days have been a triumph. Talk of boycotts is now in the air.
Among the latest cables is one from a US diplomat in Beijing telling Washington that the hacking into Google which forced it out of China was prompted by a Politburo member. He had searched his name on Google and found articles criticising him.
(the independent)
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