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SAN FRANCISCO: MasterCard Worldwide on Monday stopped funneling payments to WikiLeaks a day after online financial transactions service disconnected a button for donations to the whistle-blower website.
News website CNET cited a MasterCard spokesman as saying WikiLeaks was being cut off due to rules barring use for “directly or indirectly engaging in or facilitating any action that is illegal.”
WikiLeaks has responded to threats on its funding with online pleas to “Keep us strong.” People could still donate to the website using Visa, bank transfers, or sending donations by old-fashioned “snail mail.”
The net was tightening around Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on Monday as Swiss authorities shut a bank account and British police reportedly received an international arrest warrant issued by Sweden.
The Swiss Post Office’s banking arm said it had closed an account set up by the embattled Australian after he gave false information.
“PostFinance has ended its business relationship with WikiLeaks founder Julian Paul Assange,” the bank said in a statement.
WikiLeaks had advertised the PostFinance account details online to “donate directly to the Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks Staff Defense Fund,” giving an account name of “Assange Julian Paul, Geneve.”
WikiLeaks came under attack from a different angle during the weekend when a “hacktivist” operating with the handle “th3j35t3r” disabled the website with a dedicated-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, according to Internet security firm Panda Labs.
A statement evidently issued by the hacker, or hackers, at microblogging service Twitter claimed the assault was retaliation for WikiLeaks “attempting to endanger the lives of our troops, other assets & foreign relations,” according to Panda.
In one of its most explosive leaks of US secrets so far, WikiLeaks divulged a list of key infrastructure sites around the world that, if attacked by terrorists, could critically harm US security.
The DDoS attack kept WikiLeaks down for nearly 28 hours before it was moved elsewhere on the Internet to evade the onslaught, according to Panda.
Mirror websites, which replicate WikiLeaks’ data, have sprung up on servers in various countries.
The release added to the political storm engulfing Wikileaks and Assange, who broke cover on Friday to say in an online chat that he had boosted his security after receiving death threats.
The elusive 39-year-old is thought to be hiding in Britain.
A court in the Swedish capital had ordered on November 18 an arrest warrant for Assange for questioning on suspicions of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion” in Sweden in August.
Julian Assange will fight extradition to Sweden, his lawyer said, after British police received a request for him to face charges in Stockholm.
Assange's London-based lawyer Jennifer Robinson said the Australian whistleblower would likely resist being returned to Sweden for fear he could be turned over to the United States where outrage is growing over his revelations.
“(The Swedish prosecutor) said publicly on television last night that all she wants is his side of the story. Now we've offered that on numerous occasions. There is no need for him to return to Sweden to do that,” she said.
“I think he will get a fair hearing here in Britain but I think our, his, prospects if he were ever to be returned to the US, which is a real threat, of a fair trial, is, in my view, nigh on impossible,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Robinson refused to discuss further details of Assange's looming meeting with British police, saying only that it was “bizarre” that his legal team had not yet seen a copy of the arrest warrant and had seen no evidence.
Declining to confirm whether Assange was already in Britain as widely reported by media, the lawyer said her client was being “isolated and persecuted” and that death threats had been made on blogs against his son.
“This is obviously part of a broader risk of a threat to Mr Assange himself,” she said in the ABC interview from London.
Robinson said any arrest of Assange would not prevent the publication of more of the 250,000 leaked documents that WikiLeaks is holding, as media groups have agreed an “orderly” publishing schedule for the coming months.
