Companies begin distancing themselves after WikiLeaks founder's arrest

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested, as Visa and MasterCard joined companies that are distancing themselves from the online publisher of classified documents to avoid increased scrutiny and political pressure.

Assange was arrested in Great Britain where a London judge Tuesday denied him bail. He said in court he would continue fighting efforts to extradite him to Sweden to face a sex-assault investigation.

Assange has denied the accusations, which have nothing to do with his continuing to publish classified U.S. diplomatic cables.

Meanwhile on Tuesday the organization's finances came under increasing pressure as both Visa and Mastercard joined two other sources that have cut off funding methods. Visa announced it had suspended all payments to WikiLeaks pending an investigation of the organization's business.

"MasterCard is taking action to ensure that WikiLeaks can no longer accept MasterCard-branded products," a spokesman for MasterCard Worldwide said Monday.

But a WikiLeaks spokesman told The Associated Press that the classified information would keep flowing online regardless of the hardships. Earlier the Swiss finance site the organization was using to accept donations was closed down, just days after its U.S. finance site closed its account.

PostFinance, the finance arm of the Swiss Postal service SwissPost, said in a statement that it closed the account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, "after it was revealed that Assange provided false information regarding his place of residence."

WikiLeaks responded in its own message posted online that the group's defense fund at PostFinance, which contained 31,000 euros ($41,000), was seized after the bank found that Assange, "as a homeless refugee attempting to gain residency in Switzerland, had used his lawyer's address in Geneva for the bank's correspondence."

Also on Monday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he had "personally authorized several significant actions" against WikiLeaks. He declined to discuss specifics because of the "ongoing criminal investigation," but Holder stressed that "they are very significant."

Monday's problems come after the online payment service provider PayPal had cut off the WikiLeaks account over the weekend.

PayPal was not returning calls, but posted an online statement, saying: "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."

WikiLeaks confirmed the PayPal trouble in its Twitter account, saying: "PayPal bans WikiLeaks after U.S. government pressure."

Before the PayPal incident, American web companies Amazon.com and EveryDNS, based in New Hampshire, booted WikiLeaks from their servers late last week. That action reportedly came after political pressure and massive hacking attempts.

Online bookseller Amazon denied it took action because of government pressure. Amazon also was not returning calls.

But in a released statement it said that by distributing documents that it could not prove it had legally obtained, Wikileaks was violating its user service agreement.

Specifically, Amazon said WikiLeaks violated a section that states, "you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content ... [and] that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity."

WikiLeaks tweeted back, "Amazon's press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it."

Pressure has come from many political leaders, but especially from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut. A week ago he called on the Obama administration to "use all legal means necessary to shut down WikiLeaks before it can do more damage by releasing additional cables."

Lieberman is the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He called WikiLeaks "a shared threat to collective international security."

When Amazon booted WikiLeaks, Lieberman responded, "The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies ... I call on any other company or organization that is hosting WikiLeaks to immediately terminate its relationship with them ... No responsible company — whether American or foreign — should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials."

And Lieberman said he will be questioning Amazon further about its relationship with WikidLeaks. He also wants to know what web service providers will do in the future to ensure that they are not used to distribute classified information.

The other service provider, EveryDNS, posted an original statement on its site saying the services were terminated for violation of a provision which states that any "Member shall not interfere with another Member's use and enjoyment of the Service or another entity's use and enjoyment of similar services."

The interference occurred when the now disabled wikileaks.org site became the target of multiple distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. Later EveryDNS posted another, almost apologetic statement, saying, "Let's be clear, this is a difficult issue to deal with and there are opinions on all sides. Second, EveryDNS.net, the world's largest free managed DNS provider, is not taking a position on the content hosted on the wikileaks.org or wikileaks.ch website, it is following established policies so as not to put any one" user's interests ahead of any others.

"Lastly, regardless of what people say about the actions of EveryDNS.net, we know this much is true — we believe in our New Hampshire state motto, Live Free or Die."

Some other governments, however, share Lieberman's view. The French government has ousted WikiLeaks from its web presence in that country. And China has moved to block the site altogether.

But the organization has established a site in Switzerland at https://wikileaks.ch. And Monday it claimed to have more than 500 mirror sites up and running all over the globe.

Meanwhile The Washington Post reported that the White House Office of Management and Budget has told all federal agency general counsel to remind workers and contractors to avoid WikiLeaks.

"Classified information, whether or not already posted on public Web sites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority," officials warned.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that Columbia University students considering federal careers were warned to avoid linking to or posting online comments about the WikiLeaks documents. The school's Office of Career Services sent an e-mail to students saying online discourse about the documents "would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information."

But on Monday Columbia's John Coatsworth, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, reversed and clarified the school's stand. In a memo, Coatsworth wrote, "Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA's position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences."

(Published by Law.com - December 8, 2010)