Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is an international, online, non-profit, journalisticorganisation which publishes secret information, news leaks,and classified media from anonymous sources.Its website, initiated in 2006 in Iceland by the organization Sunshine Press,claimed a database of more than 1.2 million documents within a year of its launch.Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder, editor-in-chief, and director. Kristinn Hrafnsson, Joseph Farrell, and Sarah Harrison are the only other publicly known and acknowledged associates of Julian Assange.Hrafnsson is also a member of Sunshine Press Productions along with Assange, Ingi Ragnar Ingason, and Gavin MacFadyen.
The group has released a number of significant documents which have become front-page news items. Early releases included documentation of equipment expenditures and holdings in the Afghanistan war and corruption in Kenya.In April 2010, WikiLeaks published gunsight footage from the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike in which Iraqi journalists were among those killed by an AH-64 Apache helicopter, known as the Collateral Murder video. In July of the same year, WikiLeaks released Afghan War Diary, a compilation of more than 76,900 documents about the War in Afghanistan not previously available to the public.In October 2010, the group released a set of almost 400,000 documents called the "Iraq War Logs" in coordination with major commercial media organisations. This allowed the mapping of 109,032 deaths in "significant" attacks by insurgents in Iraq that had been reported to Multi-National Force – Iraq, including about 15,000 that had not been previously published.During April 2011, WikiLeaks began publishing 779 secret files relating to prisoners detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
In November 2010, WikiLeaks collaborated with major global media organisations to release U.S. State department diplomatic "cables" in redacted format. On 1 September 2011, it became public that an encrypted version of WikiLeaks' huge archive of unredacted U.S. State Department cables had been available via BitTorrent for months and that the decryption key (similar to a password) was available to those who knew where to find it. WikiLeaks blamed the breach on its former publication partner, the UK newspaper The Guardian, and that newspaper's journalist David Leigh, who revealed the key in a book published in February 2011;The Guardian argued that WikiLeaks was to blame since they gave the impression that the decryption key was temporary (something not possible for a file decryption key).The German periodical Der Spiegel reported a more complex story involving errors on both sides. The incident resulted in widely expressed fears that the information released could endanger innocent lives.

Foundation
 The wikileaks.org domain name was registered on 4 October 2006.The website was begun, and published its first document, in December 2006. WikiLeaks has been predominantly represented in public since January 2007 by Julian Assange, who is now generally recognised as the "founder of WikiLeaks".According to the magazine Wired, a volunteer said that Assange described himself in a private conversation as "the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organizer, financier, and all the rest".
WikiLeaks relies to some degree on volunteers and previously described its founders as a mixture of Asian dissidents, journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the United States, Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa,but has progressively adopted a more traditional publication model and no longer accepts either user comments or edits. As of June 2009, the website had more than 1,200 registered volunteers and listed an advisory board comprising Assange, his deputy Jash Vora and seven other people, some of whom denied any association with the organisation.

Despite using the name "WikiLeaks", the website has not used the "wiki" publication method since May 2010.Also, despite some popular confusion due to both having "wiki" in their names, WikiLeaks and Wikipedia are not affiliated with each other ("wiki" is not a brand name);Wikia, a for-profit corporation affiliated loosely with the Wikimedia Foundation, did purchase several WikiLeaks-related domain names (including wikileaks.com and wikileaks.net) as a "protective brand measure" in 2007.

Purpose
  According to the WikiLeaks website, its goal is "to bring important news and information to the public... One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth."
Another of the organisation's goals is to ensure that journalists and whistleblowers are not jailed for emailing sensitive or classified documents. The online "drop box" is described by the WikiLeaks website as "an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to [WikiLeaks] journalists".
In an interview as part of the American television programme The Colbert Report, Assange discussed the limit to the freedom of speech, saying, "[it is] not an ultimate freedom, however free speech is what regulates government and regulates law. That is why in the US Constitution the Bill of Rights says that Congress is to make no such law abridging the freedom of the press. It is to take the rights of the press outside the rights of the law because those rights are superior to the law because in fact they create the law. Every constitution, every bit of legislation is derived from the flow of information. Similarly every government is elected as a result of people understanding things".

The project has been compared to Daniel Ellsberg's revelation of the "Pentagon Papers" (US war-related secrets) in 1971.In the United States, the "leaking" of some documents may be legally protected. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution guarantees anonymity, at least in the context of political discourse.Author and journalist Whitley Strieber has spoken about the benefits of the WikiLeaks project, noting that "Leaking a government document can mean jail, but jail sentences for this can be fairly short. However, there are many places where it means long incarceration or even death, such as China and parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Leaks
2006–08
WikiLeaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys."In August 2007, the UK newspaper The Guardian published a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi based on information provided via WikiLeaks. In November 2007, a March 2003 copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta detailing the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was released.The document revealed that some prisoners were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past denied repeatedly. In February 2008, WikiLeaks released allegations of illegal activities at the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, which resulted in the bank suing WikiLeaks and obtaining an injunction which temporarily suspended the operation of wikileaks.org.The California judge had the service provider of WikiLeaks block the site's domain (wikileaks.org) on 18 February 2008, although the bank only wanted the documents to be removed but WikiLeaks had failed to name a contact. The website was instantly mirrored by supporters, and later that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.In March 2008, WikiLeaks published what they referred to as "the collected secret 'bibles' of Scientology," and three days later received letters threatening to sue them for breach of copyright.In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on WikiLeaks after being hacked into by members of a group known as Anonymous.In November 2008, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks, after appearing briefly on a weblog.A year later, on October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked.
2009
In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the 2008 Peru oil scandal.During February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports followed in March by a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.In July, it released a report relating to a serious nuclear accident that had occurred at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in 2009.Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to the Stuxnet computer worm.In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which caused the 2008–2012 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off.In October, Joint Services Protocol 440, a British document advising the security services on how to avoid documents being leaked, was published by WikiLeaks.Later that month, it announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company Trafigura to stop The Guardian (London) from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in Côte d'IvoireIn November, it hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, although they were not leaked originally to WikiLeaks.It also released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages sent on the day of the 11 September attacks.During 2008 and 2009, WikiLeaks published the alleged lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for Australia, Denmark and Thailand. These were originally created to prevent access to child pornography and terrorism, but the leaks revealed that other sites featuring unrelated subjects were also listed.
2010
In mid-February 2010, WikiLeaks received a leaked diplomatic cable from the US Embassy in Reykjavik relating to the Icesave scandal, which they published on 18 February.The cable, known as Reykjavik 13 was the first of the classified documents WikiLeaks published among those allegedly provided to them by US Army Private Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley). In March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report written in March 2008 discussing the leaking of material by WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred.In April, a classified video of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras.In the week after the release, "wikileaks" was the search term with the most significant growth worldwide during the last seven days as measured by Google Insights.In June 2010, Manning was arrested after alleged chat logs were given to US authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom she had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo she had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and about 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks. In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to the publications The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including "friendly fire" and civilian casualties.At the end of July, a 1.4 GB "insurance file" was added to the Afghan War Diary page, whose decryption details would be released if WikiLeaks or Assange were harmed.About 15,000 of the 92,000 documents have not yet been released by WikiLeaks, as the group is currently reviewing the documents to remove some of the sources of the information. WikiLeaks asked the Pentagon and human-rights groups to help remove names from the documents to reduce the potential harm caused by their release, but did not receive assistance.After the Love Parade stampede in Duisburg, Germany, on 24 July 2010, a local resident published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by securing a court order on 16 August forcing the removal of the documents from the website on which it was hosted.On 20 August 2010, WikiLeaks released a publication entitled Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007–2010, which comprised 43 internal documents regarding the Love Parade 2010.After the leak of information concerning the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War were released. The BBC quoted the US Dept. of Defense referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the largest leak of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked documents emphasized claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the 2003 war.
Diplomatic cables release
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and the United States (The New York Times) started simultaneously to publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential – but not top-secret (dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010).WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of the cables in phases over several months.
The contents of the diplomatic cables include numerous unguarded comments and revelations regarding: critiques and praises about the host countries of various US embassies; political manoeuvring regarding climate change; discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East; efforts and resistance towards nuclear disarmament; actions in the War on Terror; assessments of other threats around the world; dealings between various countries; US intelligence and counterintelligence efforts; and other diplomatic actions. Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak varied. On 14 December 2010 the United States Department of Justice issued a subpoena directing Twitter to provide information for accounts registered to or associated with WikiLeaks.Twitter decided to notify its users.The overthrow of the presidency in Tunisia of 2011 has been attributed partly to reaction against the corruption revealed by leaked cables.
2011–12
In late April 2011, files related to the Guantanamo prison were released.In December 2011, WikiLeaks started to release the Spy Files.On 27 February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor.
On 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012.
On Thursday, 25 October 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Detainee Policies, more than 100 classified or otherwise restricted files from the United States Department of Defense covering the rules and procedures for detainees in U.S. military custody.
2013
In April, WikiLeaks published more than 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents from the 1970s. These documents included the Kissinger cables.
In September Dagens Næringsliv said that Wikileaks, on the previous evening, had published on its website "the whereabouts of 20 chiefs of European surveillance technology companies, during the last year".This was part of Wikileaks Spy Files 3 project, which was a release of close to 250 documents from more than 90 surveillance companies.
On November 13, a complete draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership's Intellectual Property Rights chapter was published by WikiLeaks.
Announcements of upcoming leaks
In May 2010, WikiLeaks said it had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military which they were preparing to release.
In an interview with Chris Anderson on 19 July 2010, Assange showed a document WikiLeaks had on an Albanian oil-well blowout, and said they also had material from inside BP, and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very high calibre" but added that they had not been able to verify and release the material because they did not have enough volunteer journalists.
In October 2010, Assange told a major Moscow newspaper that "The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia".Assange later clarified: "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It's not right to say there's going to be a particular focus on Russia".
In a 2009 interview by the magazine Computerworld, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from Bank of America". In 2010, he told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" early in 2011, from the private sector, involving "a big U.S. bank" and revealing an "ecosystem of corruption". Bank of America's stock price decreased by 3%, apparently as a result of this announcement.Assange commented on the possible effect of the release that "it could take down a bank or two."In August 2011, Reuters announced that Daniel Domscheit-Berg had destroyed approximately 5GB of data cache from Bank of America, that Assange had under his control.
In December 2010, Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on BBC Television that WikiLeaks had information it considered to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself against the authorities.

In January 2011, Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker, passed data containing account details of 2,000 prominent people to Assange, who stated that the information will be vetted before being made publicly available at a later date.


Operational challenges

Assange has acknowledged that the practice of 

posting largely unfiltered classified information 

online could one day cause the website to have 

"blood on our hands." He expressed the opinion that 

the potential to save lives, however, outweighs the 

danger to innocents. Furthermore, WikiLeaks has 

highlighted independent investigations which have 

failed to find any evidence of civilians harmed as a 

result of WikiLeaks' activities. A surveillance-

resistant social network, Friends of WikiLeaks 

(FoWL), was initiated by sympathizers with the 

organization in May 2012 to perform advocacy. 


Response from media

Chinese journalist Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years 

imprisonment, in 2005 after publicising an email 

from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the 

Tiananmen Square massacre.

One of the WikiLeaks activists owned a server that 

was being used as a node for the Tor network. 

Millions of secret transmissions passed through it. 

The activist noticed that hackers from China were 

using the network to gather foreign governments’ 

information, and began to record this traffic. Only a 

small fraction has ever been posted on WikiLeaks, 

but the initial tranche served as the site's 

foundation, and Assange was able to say, we have 

received over one million documents from thirteen 

countries." 

      —Raffi Khatchadourian 

Assange responded to the suggestion that 

eavesdropping on Chinese hackers played a crucial 

part in the early days of WikiLeaks by saying "the 

imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 

investigation into Chinese espionage one of our 

contacts was involved in. Somewhere between none 

and handful of those documents were ever released 

on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the 

Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations 

were informed (by us)".

Response from governments

Australia

On 16 March 2009, the Australian Communications 

and Media Authority added WikiLeaks to their 

proposed list of sites that will be blocked for all 

Australians if the mandatory internet filtering 

scheme is implemented as planned. The blacklisting 

had been removed by 29 November 2010. 

People's Republic of China

The WikiLeaks website claims that the government 

of the People's Republic of China has attempted to 

block all traffic to websites with "wikileaks" in the 

URL since 2007, but that this can be bypassed by 

encrypted connections or by using one of WikiLeaks' 

many covert URLs. 

Germany

The home of Theodor Reppe, registrant of the 

German WikiLeaks domain name, wikileaks.de, was 

raided on 24 March 2009 after WikiLeaks released 

the Australian Communications and Media 

Authority (ACMA) censorship blacklist.[  The site 

was not affected. 

Iceland

After the release of the 2007 Baghdad airstrikes 

video and as they prepared to release film of the 

Granai airstrike, Julian Assange has said that his 

group of volunteers came under intense 

surveillance. In an interview and Twitter posts he 

said that a restaurant in Reykjavík where his group 

of volunteers met came under surveillance 

in March; 

that there was "covert following and hidden 

photography" by police and foreign intelligence 

services; that an apparent British intelligence agent 

made thinly veiled threats in a Luxembourg car 

park; 

and that one of the volunteers was detained by 

police 

for 21 hours. Another volunteer posted that 

computers were seized, saying "If anything happens 

to us, you know why... and you know who is 

responsible.”According to theColumbia Journalism 

Review, "the Icelandic press took a look at Assange’s 

charges of being surveilled in Iceland  and, at best, 

have found nothing to substantiate them." 

In August 2009, Kaupthing Bank secured a court 

order preventing Iceland's national broadcaster, 

RÚV, from broadcasting a risk analysis report 

showing the bank's substantial exposure to debt 

default risk. This information had been leaked to 

WikiLeaks and remained available on the WikiLeaks 

website; faced with an injunction minutes before 

broadcast, the channel aired a screen-shot of the 

WikiLeaks site instead of the scheduled piece on the 

bank. Citizens of Iceland were reported to be 

outraged that RÚV was prevented from 

broadcasting 

news of relevance.  Therefore, WikiLeaks has been 

credited with inspiring the Icelandic Modern Media 

Initiative, a bill meant to reclaim Iceland's 2007 

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans 

frontières) ranking as first in the world for free 

speech. It aims to enact a range of protections for 

sources, journalists, and publishers. Birgitta 

Jónsdóttir, a former WikiLeaks volunteer and 

member of the Icelandic parliament, is the chief 

sponsor of the proposal.

Thailand

The Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency 

Situation (CRES) is currently censoring the 

WikiLeaks website in Thailand and more than 

40,000 other websites  because of the emergency 

decree declared in Thailand at the beginning of April 

2010 as a result of political instabilities. 

United States

On 17 July 2010, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf 

of WikiLeaks at the Hackers on Planet Earth 

conference in New York City, replacing Assange 

because of the presence of federal agents at the 

conference. He announced that the WikiLeaks 

submission system was again operating, after it had 

been suspended temporarily. Assange was a 

surprise speaker at aTED conference on 19 July 

2010 in Oxford, England, and confirmed that the 

site had begun accepting submissions again. 

Upon returning to the US from the Netherlands, on 

29 July, Appelbaum was detained for three hours at 

the airport by US agents, according to anonymous 

sources. The sources told CNETthat Appelbaum's 

bag was searched, receipts from his bag were 

photocopied, and his laptop computer was 

inspected, although in what manner was unknown. 

Appelbaum reportedly refused to answer questions 

without a lawyer present, and was not allowed to 

make a telephone call. His three mobile telephones 

were reportedly taken and not returned. On 31 July, 

he spoke at aDefcon conference and mentioned his 

telephone being "seized". After speaking, he was 

approached by two FBI agents and questioned. 

Access to WikiLeaks is currently blocked in the 

United States Library of Congress.  On 3 December 

2010 the White House Office of Management and 

Budget sent a memorandum forbidding all 

unauthorised federal government employees and 

contractors from accessing classified documents 

publicly available on WikiLeaks and other websites. 

The U.S. Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

and the Justice Department are considering 

criminally prosecuting WikiLeaks and Assange "on 

grounds they encouraged the theft of government 

property", although former prosecutors say doing so 

would be difficult. According to a report on the 

website Daily Beast, the Obama administration 

asked the UK, Germany, and Australia among others 

to also consider bringing criminal charges against 

Assange for the Afghan war leaks and to help limit 

Assange's travels across international borders. 

Columbia University students have been warned by 

their Office of Career Services that the U.S. State 

Department had contacted the office in an email 

saying that the diplomatic cables which were 

released by WikiLeaks were "still considered 

classified" and that "online discourse about the 

documents 'would call into question your ability to 

deal with confidential information.


All U.S. federal government staff have been blocked 

from viewing WikiLeaks. 


As for individual responses, government officials 

had mixed feelings.

 Although Hillary Clinton refused to 

comment on specific reports, she claimed that the 

leaks "put people's lives in danger" and "threatens 

national security.” Former United States Secretary 

of Defense Robert Gates commented, "Is this 

embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. 

Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly 

modest."


Response from corporations


Facebook

WikiLeaks claimed in April 2010 that Facebook 

deleted its fan page, which had 30,000 fans. 

However, as of 7 December 2010 the group's 

Facebook fan page was available and had grown by 

100,000 fans daily since 1 December, to more than 

1.6 million fans. It was also the largest growth of the 

week.. Regarding the presence of WikiLeaks on 

Facebook, Andrew Noyes, the company's D.C.-based 

Manager of Public Policy Communications, has 

stated "the Wikileaks Facebook Page doesnot violate 

our content standards nor have we encountered any 

material posted on the page that violates our 

policies.


U.S. diplomatic cables leak responses

According to The Times (London), WikiLeaks and its 

members have complained about continuing 

harassment and surveillance by law enforcement 

and intelligence organisations, including extended 

detention, seizure of computers, veiled threats, 

"covert following and hidden photography."Two 

lawyers for Julian Assange in the United Kingdom 

told The Guardian that they believed theywere being 

watched by the security services after the U.S. cables 

leak, which started on 28 November 2010
. 
Furthermore, several companies ended association 

with WikiLeaks. After providing 24-hour 

notification, American-owned EveryDNS deleted 

WikiLeaks from its entries on 2 December 2010, 

citingDDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of 

its infrastructure".The website's 'info' DNS lookup 

remained operational at alternative addresses for 

direct access respectively to the WikiLeaks and 

Cablegate websites. On the same day, Amazon.com 

severed its association with WikiLeaks, to which it 

was providing infrastructure services, after an 

intervention by an aide of U.S. Senator Joe 

Lieberman. Amazon denied acting under political 

pressure, citing a violation of its terms of service. 

Citing indirect pressure from the U.S. 

Government,Tableau Software also deleted 

WikiLeaks' data from its website for people to use 

for data visualisation. 

During the days following, hundreds of (and 

eventually more than a thousand mirror websites of 

the WikiLeaks website were established, and the 

Anonymous group of Internet activists asked 

sympathizers to attack the websites of companies 

which opposed WikiLeaks, under the banner of 

Operation Payback, previously directed at anti-

piracy organisations AFP reported that attempts to 

deactivate the wikileaks.org address had resulted in 

the website surviving via the so-called Streisand 

effect, whereby attempts to censor information 

online causes it to be replicated in many places. 

On 3 December, PayPal, the payment processor 

owned by eBay, permanently ended the account of 

the Wau Holland Foundation that had been 

redirecting donations to WikiLeaks. 

" The Vice President of PayPal stated later that they 

stopped accepting payments after the "State 

Department told us these were illegal activities. It 

was straightforward." Later the same day, he said 

that his previous statement was incorrect, and that 

it was in fact based on a letter from the State 

Department to WikiLeaks. On 8 December 2010, the 

Wau Holland Foundation released a press 

statement, saying it has filed a legal action against 

PayPal for blocking its account used for WikiLeaks 

payments and for libel due to PayPal's allegations of 

"illegal activity".


On 6 December, the Swiss bank PostFinance 

announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange 

that it holds, totalling €31,000. In a statement on its 

website, it stated that this was because Assange 

"provided false information regarding his place of 

residence" when opening the account. WikiLeaks 

released a statement saying this was because 

Assange, "as a homeless refugee attempting to gain 

residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's 

address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence”..

On the same day, MasterCard announced that it was 

"taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no 

longer accept MasterCard-branded products", 

adding "MasterCard rules prohibit customers from 

directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any 

action that is illegal.” The next day, Visa Inc. 

announced it was suspending payments to 

WikiLeaks, pending "further investigations". In a 

move of support for WikiLeaks, the organization 

XIPWIRE established a way to donate to WikiLeaks, 

and waived their fees. Datacell, the Iceland-based IT 

company controlled by Swiss investors that enabled 

WikiLeaks to accept credit card donations, 

announced that it would take legal action against 

Visa Europe and Mastercard, in order to resume 

allowing payments to the website. 


On 7 December 2010, The Guardian stated that 

people could donate to WikiLeaks via Commerzbank 

in Kassel, Germany, or Landsbanki in Iceland, or by 

post to a post office box at theUniversity of 

Melbourne or at the wikileaks.ch domain. 


The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi 

Pillay stated that Visa, Mastercard, and Amazon may 

be "violating WikiLeaks' right to freedom of 

expression" by withdrawing their services. 


On 21 December, media reported that Apple Inc. had 

removed an application from its App Store, which 

provided access to the embassy cable leaks. 


As part of its 'Initial Assessments Pursuant to... 

WikiLeaks', the US Presidential Executive Office has 

issued a memorandum to the heads of Executive 

Departments and Agencies asking whether they have 

an 'insider threat program'. 

On 14 July 2011, WikiLeaks and DataCell ehf. of 

Iceland filed a complaint against the international 

card companies, VISA Europe and MasterCard 

Europe, for infringement of the antitrust rules of the 

EU, in response to their withdrawal of financial 

services to the organisation. In a joint press release, 

the organisations stated: "The closure by VISA 

Europe and MasterCard of Datcell‘s access to the 

payment card networks in order to stop donations 

to WikiLeaks violates the competition rules of the 

European Community." DataCell filed a complaint 

with the European Commission on 14 July 2011.


Response from the financial industry


Since the publications of CableGate, WikiLeaks has 

experienced an unprecedented global financial 

blockade by major finance companies including 

Mastercard, Visa and PayPal although there has 

no legal accusation of any wrongdoing.


In October 2010, it was reported that the 

organization Moneybookers, which collected 

donations for WikiLeaks, had ended its relationship 

with the website. Moneybookers stated that its 

decision had been made "to comply with money 

laundering or other investigations conducted by 

government authorities, agencies or commissions." 


On 18 December 2010, Bank of America announced 

it would "not process transactions of any type that 

we have reason to believe are intended for 

Wikileaks," citing "Wikileaks might be engaged in 

activities. WikiLeaks responded in a 

tweet by encouraging their sympathizers who were 

BoA customers to close their accounts. Bank of 

America has long been believed to be the target of 

WikiLeaks' next major release. 


Late in 2010, Bank of America communicated with 

the law company Hunton & Williams to stop 

WikiLeaks. Hunton & Williams assembled a group of 

security specialists, HBGary Federal,Palantir 

Technologies, and Berico Technologies.


During 5 and 6 February 2011,the group Anonymous 

hacked HBGary's website, copied tens of thousands 

of documents from HBGary, posted tens of 

thousands of company emails online, and usurped 

Barr's Twitter account in revenge. Some of the 

documents taken by Anonymous show HBGary 

Federal was working on behalf of Bank of America to 

respond to WikiLeaks' planned release of the bank's 

internal documents. Emails detailed a supposed 

business proposal by HBGary to assist Bank of 

America's law company, Hunton & Williams, and 

revealed that the companies were willing to violate 

the law to damage WikiLeaks and Anonymous.


CEO Aaron Barr thought he'd uncovered the 

hackers' 

identities and like rats, they'd scurry for cover. If he 

could nail them, he could cover up the crimes H&W, 

HBGary, and BoA planned, bring down WikiLeaks, 

decapitate Anonymous, and place his opponents in 

prison while collecting a cool fee. He thought he was 

88% right; he was 88% wrong.

   —Leigh Lundin


In October 2011, Julian Assange said the financial 

blockade had destroyed 95% of WikiLeaks' revenues 

and announced that it was suspending publishing 

operations in order to concentrate on fighting the 

blockade and raising new funds.


On 18 July 2012, Wikileaks, shunned by the financial 

industry and almost insolvent, announced that it 

had found a new method to accept donations. 

Accordingly, the Fund for the Defense of Net 

Neutrality (FDNN) had agreed to channel 

contributions via Carte Bleue, and WikiLeaks 

claimed that contractual obligation would prevent 

Visa and MasterCard blocking participation with 

such transactions.