Facebook deletes pro-WikiLeaks hackers' account

Photo illustration shows a figurine of Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, in Naples December 6, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Ciro De Luca

Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of cyber activists who targeted Visa and other Internet payment sites that sought to block the WikiLeaks website after its release of U.S. diplomatic cables. Facebook confirmed it had removed the activists' Operation Payback site on Thursday because it was promoting a distributed denial of service attack -- an illegal form of freezing websites. Twitter declined to comment.
The swoop against Operation Payback's self-described campaigners for Internet freedom followed their online attacks on credit card giants like Visa and MasterCard.
The campaign reappeared on Twitter later in the European afternoon using another account. Experts said the outages were unlikely to have much effect on the pro-WikiLeaks cyber campaign as activists were using separate chatrooms to organize.

Wikileaks Payment Company Plans To Sue Visa & Mastercard Over Cutoff

from the priceless dept

With Visa and Mastercard refusing to take payments for Wikileaks, the company that was providing payment services to Wikileaks, Datacell, has announced plans to sue both credit card companies to try to get them to go back to accepting payments. There's no indication of exactly what law Datacell thinks these firms broke. Unless there are more details, this does sound like a bunch of shouting in the wind. As much as I disagree with Visa and MasterCards' decisions to cut off Wikileaks, they are private companies and can refuse service to anyone, no matter how petty it makes them look.

Visa & MasterCard: KKK Is A-OK, But Wikileaks Is Wicked

from the starvation-through-political-pressure dept

Well, it looks like we can add Visa to the list of companies pressured into no longer working with Wikileaks, following a similar move by MasterCard. At least, unlike MasterCard, Visa isn't already claiming that Wikileaks was convicted of a crime. Instead, it's just said that it's suspended any work with Wikileaks "pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."