PayPal attacked after cutting off Wikileaks

Serious need for a Sense of Proportion

So let me get this straight: anyone who opposes a media circus is pro "world domination"? The world was going to be ground under the boot-heel of repression unless they got the story out about Sarkozy chasing a pet rabbit, and the right thing to do is to stop my payment for a graphics card going through? These people need to go out and clear some snow. Preferably for several weeks.

By Steve_Cassidy on 6 Dec 2010

So what world do you want?

Sarkozy chasing a pet rabbit is hardly major news.

Even so, would you really want the government to suppress it, just because they feel like it?

Stopping payments might not be the best thing to do - but it certainly makes 'them' take notice and at least someone is making an effort for the right of journalists to report.

Or is that right not important?

By greemble on 6 Dec 2010

@Steve_Cassidy

Steve, your comment sounds remarkably similar to what people say about strikes or protests that affect their day-to-day activities.

After looking at the article again (it's the blog site that was taken down, not the the payment system), I suggest you try to view the DoS attack on PayPal from a different perspective than your own.

By luca_leonardi on 6 Dec 2010

Free Speech is Important

Speaking from direct personal experience, I was victimised by a government organisation in my employment. One individual took a dislike to me and decided to accuse me of misconduct and engineered my suspension- but refused to tell me what it was for, citing Public Interest Disclosure Act. A week later, they managed to persuade an agency worker to make a complaint about me.

For some reason, the Union simply ignored me, and even without any legal help, I took action against them. Two years after suspension, they eventually had to (because of a court order) hold a disciplinary hearing. The charges ranged from calling an agency guy a "dinosaur" (I did -he wanted to destroy all computers) to making someone slightly uncomfortable in an unspecified way sometime in 2002 (it was October 2009 then). Needless to say I was able to defend every single charge, and they had to find me "not guilty" of every one of the 36 charges they laid against me. A few days later, I discovered, more by luck than anything else that the "complaint" against me was procured AFTER I was suspended. I also discovered many important things, like a solicitors investigation into some issues that identified 3 named individuals who had been trying to persuade people to make complaints against me. But they took no action at the highest level!! They had tried their level best to keep that report hiddeen and only disclosed it when they were threatedned to be struck off as defendants and matter referred to the police for "perverting the course of justice" or "contempt of court".

Then suddenly the Union wanted to help me and I had a very good legal team from August 2010.

I uncovered criminality and breaches of numerous legislation including PIDA, RIPA, DPA on the part of this government organisation and very serious attempts to cover up. I uncovered all this by sheer determination and hard work in researching on the internet. I am an engineer by training, but am now quite knowledgeable about employment law.

In September, on the day of the hearing, they offered a very large sum of money to settle the case and I had to accept(I am told it was 10-15 times the maximum amount I would have won). It wasnt the moneyed that was important, I settled because the Union would have had to spen £50k at least and would not recovered any of it whether I won or lost, and seeing the offer was so huge, they said that if I didnt settle,they would have withdrawn support. I didnt have £50k and could not carry on by myself. Also as they pointed out it would have been stupid.

Part of the deal was I would resign and would not keep quiet about it.

I am still very bitter that so many senior people were complicit in trying to cover up.

That is why I deplore what paypal have done and support the direct action.

I would never have belived that people would do such things - and I am not in a secretive field - just in construction. I was in charge of some 130 staff and was always fair and open.

By fairness on 6 Dec 2010

Personally I agree with Steve. I don't think that some dodgy hacker group who orchestrate DoS attacks are exactly heroes. And yes, I think they should be assigned to snow clearing duties as well ;-)

By rjp2000 on 6 Dec 2010

Support the resistance!!!

Or should we, paypal has every right to close down the account since their "conditions" were violated, but the general idea that Wikileaks is being discriminated against just because it is trying to bring out the truth, and those people who do not care about openness and transparency, that is the key to democratic government, i say try to care, someday it may effect you indirectly or directly!

By mobilegnet on 6 Dec 2010

following the principles of free speech

We live in a society where we elect a group of people to be caretakers of the wider community and trust in them to ensure our safety and well being.
Any group which, through aggressive means, threatens that principle, and take innocents as hostage to further their cause, can be seen as little else but terrorists.
Whether that hostage taking is through denying individuals access to web services they rely on or, as luca_leonardi refer to, conduct strikes which stop me from going about my business is irrelevant. I have not elected them to be my representative and cannot in any way condone their actions as acceptable in a democratic society.
If these people have opinions on how the world should work, then they should put their efforts into gaining a voice within the system, instead of behaving like the bully in the class room, who do nothing more than disrupts lessons and degrade the whole system for all others.

By kurtnielsen on 6 Dec 2010

Agree,

Clear some snow.
So an un elected clique of self rightous arrogant tw@ts can go around acting as the peoples cyber army. Extracting revenge in other peoples names...
Stick to exposing scientology before you turn into everything you oppose.

By darkhairedlord on 6 Dec 2010

@ Fairness

Good for you mate. people shouldn't be fooled into thinking the goverment has your best interests at heart, cause in most cases as history teaches, they dont.

By Mccers on 6 Dec 2010

@darkhairedlord

Are you referring the the people who carried out the DDoS attack against the PayPal blog, or the ones who did the attack against the WikiLeaks site?

By nelviticus on 6 Dec 2010

ARSES

So it's ok for the US government to do DDOs attacks on WIKILeaks but not others to support WIKILeaks.Perhaps the US government should start clearing snow.

By Jaberwocky on 6 Dec 2010

Look! The Emperor has no clothes!

I've been following the WL stories on the BBC news and must say it's getting rather boring. None of the leaks so far have been anything new. What has happened though is that some seriously (self-) important egos have been pricked and are using all the forces in the "free" world to get back at this Assinge bloke, who's a bit of a naive idiot if you ask me, as well as being slightly strange. I do wish this whole thing had not happened, because like the invasion of Iraq, all it is doing is showing the world how out of touch America is - and how fragile.

If the US had a less politicised Ambassadorial service they might have fewer cables saying undiplomatic things in such opinionated ways, but then without a House of Lords to indulge political patronage what else can they do? Ship the powerful idiots away from the glare of US domestic politics where they might wreak some damage with their strange views, after all, the rest of the World cannot vote for US politicians so it doesn't matter what happens there.

Some of the opinions expressed are laughable in their ignorance of reality. Others are no more than how most of the rest of us see the world anyway. And a lot of work has gone into removing sensitive information to protect individuals - it's not like spies have been named or anything like that. If it was seriously dangerous information, rather than being simply embarrassing, wouldn't there be court injunctions against releasing the information?

As for the DDoS attacks, they probably wouldn't have happened if important (in their own minds) people had just let the matter drop. For some reason the phrase "puffed up prigs" comes to mind, but I can't imagine why.

The attempt to ruin Assinge's reputation with put up court cases, wreck his finances with the closing of bank accounts, and silence his website with DDoS attacks and DNS bans is only going to inflame his followers to do more and is in my view raising the man into some kind of anti-hero and in the long term will be counter productive. Smear campaigns are sometimes rather too obvious.

Sure, they can easily destroy the man, but how does doing that make them look? Not very good at all: petty, mean, and vindictive. Even after the man has gone, his message will still be out there, and all that has happened will always be known, and how it was handled will be the taste that fouls the mouths of so many more ordinary people who otherwise might not have cared less. What's that saying? "I do not agree with what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it...

Democracy? Free Speech? You have to be joking, right? This is the Free World!

By SwissMac on 7 Dec 2010

Court injunctions...

The information is marked as confidential, therefore releasing it to the 'public' is illegal (under the Official Secretes Act & it's equivalent in other countries).
Court orders are thus not required. Besides, in which county would you get the order?

Anyway, it's not as though we live in a soviet dictatorship where the government can just take down sites they don't like - They still need to have reasons and then go through the court system to block them.

Oh, wait...

By greemble on 7 Dec 2010

I can't believe this

I agree with something SwissMac said.

The pursuit of the Wikileaks guy has been laughable. The number of people who have caved in the face of pressure saddened me. Shouldn't be surprised I suppose.

By windywoo on 8 Dec 2010

PayPal playing politics

PayPal deserve a taste of their own medicine. They should stay out of politics. Maybe they have something to hide themselves. Wikileaks next target is to be the banks and how they have reduced Greece, Ireland, the UK and the US to our knees.

PayPal's openness to communication from customers is worse than grim. Their willingness to indulge police-state strategies of denying Wikileaks is probably illegal so I hope someone sues them.

By TonyF12 on 9 Dec 2010

PayPal playing politics

PayPal deserve a taste of their own medicine. They should stay out of politics. Maybe they have something to hide themselves. Wikileaks next target is to be the banks and how they have reduced Greece, Ireland, the UK and the US to our knees.

PayPal's openness to communication from customers is worse than grim. Their willingness to indulge police-state strategies of denying Wikileaks is probably illegal so I hope someone sues them.

By TonyF12 on 9 Dec 2010

Stripe

Stripe looks really exciting, I can't wait for UK support.

By greatkingrat_666 on 19 Oct 2011