How to fund something like wikileaks: need outside the box thinking.

[Teaser]

Govt's are pressuring wikileaks financially. Regardless of whether you support Assange or not, the ability to shut down a website by financially strangling it is a problem for the free dissemination of information.

How can money be routed to wikileaks-style orgs if services like Paypal, etc, are afraid to work with them?

Thoughts:

1) routing transactions through cash-out type MMOs (a la Second Life, or similar services)...a bit too many hoops for the average human to jump through.



2) setting up private paypal accounts for individual wikileaks employees and routing transactions to them?

on edit: as a further complicating factor, and to note that pressure on paypal is not the only pressure being applied on the financial architecture, consider the following news:

Julian Assange's Swiss bank account closed

people can donate without paypal. But without banks?

[TorchTheWitch]

1. PayPal isn't working with Wikileaks because they broke the service agreement

PayPal is in the right in not continuing to provide the service to them, and frankly, they shouldn't have to worry about their own liability in continuing to allow their service to be used by them. Maybe Wikileaks should have considered that before. There are still ways to donate easily.

How on earth did people ever donate or collect donations before PayPal? Surely it must have been impossible. :eyes:

[sabrina 1]

3. What TOS issue was violated by Wikileaks?

Have the broken any laws? I know the State Dept. has apparently violated the Espionage laws, although so far there have been no statements from the U.S. over that nor have they been charged so far. Neither has Wikileaks been charged have they?

So, exactly what is the problem with Paypal, other than being contacted in true, totalitarian fashion, by the Government Officials, ala China, and told to block them?

I hope Wikileaks sues. In fact if the American people become fully aware of where this government stands on democracy, I would hope to see a huge class action suit against the government, on our behalf. Censorship is vile, anywhere it exists.

[TorchTheWitch]

5. did you not read PayPal's statement?

It was all over the place here.


https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/12/paypal-statement-regarding-wikileaks/
PayPal statement regarding WikiLeaks

December 3, 2010

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. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.

This has to do with Wikileaks leaking documents that were stolen by Manning. No matter how you slice it, they're stolen documents. Doesn't matter if you approve of their being leaked or not, there's no question that they were stolen.

[sabrina 1]

9. I am sure the have the right to interpret what Wikileaks is doing

as 'illegal'. But they don't say how? They DO solicit information from people who have access to governments' secrets, but so does the press.

Will the U.S. be going after all the news papers who publish information from 'unnamed sourses' from now on, and will Paypal be dropping all news organizations whose job it is to keep an eye on government activities, not that they do of course. But that is the problem, isn't it? That there would be no need for Wikileaks if the press did its job. I guess the government has successfully silenced the press and it was inevitable that once that happened, people would find other ways to get information out. They always have.

But as far as Wikileaks doing anything illegal, I don't see any basis for that charge.

There IS a basis, however, for charging the State Dept. with violating treaties that forbid spying on the UN. There are actual laws against that.

[TorchTheWitch]

11. The documents were STOLEN

and Wikileaks is puting them out to the public. Classified STOLEN documents. What the hell more do you need to know than that?

They're dealing in stolen goods and encourage and promote stealing documents. Did you not read PayPal's statement? They don't CARE if Wikileaks itself is doing anything illegal, Wikileaks accepted stolen goods, is encouraging others to give them similar stolen goods and promoting the distribution of those stolen goods.

Come on, this isn't rocket science.

[sabrina 1]

13. The documents were not stolen by Wikileaks.

They are NOT Americans. The Watergate scandal was exposed also by someone acting illegally, by the same logic. Was the Press charged with a crime for printing the Pentagon Papers, or the actual person who stole them?

I can't believe the support for government oppression of the press in the U.S.

[TorchTheWitch]

15. you still haven't read the notice have you?

AGAIN... it doesn't MATTER to PayPal if he stole the docs or not, he received them, is releasing them, is encouraging others to steal docs for him to release and promoting this on the site to which the PayPal link is attached.

READ their notice.

[sabrina 1]

20. Then they will be denying service to every media outlet in the

country, and overseas, right?

I did read the notice. Their claim was that they don't do business with people who are acting illegally. That would be the whistle-blower, NOT the publisher, at least last time I looked at this country's 'freedom of the press' laws.

Now, our Congress will probably conjure up a law to fit Wikileaks, just as they did with the FISA law, but as of now, until they start doing their dirty work, the Publisher, the press, journalists are not subject to the same laws as the whistle-blowers. Paypal needs to explain how Wikileaks has acted illegally.

[Iterate]

10. When Manning was arrested in May 2010,

the Pentagon knew Wikileaks was then in possession of leaked documents, and PayPal knew WikiLeaks had an account with them.

Yet they did nothing. Even when the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video and the Afgan War diaries were vetted by the press had been released, they did nothing.

They did nothing until this week when the issue became, not the release of the remaining documents (which simply couldn't be stopped), but citizen support through donations, visits to a website, and daily press accounts of the real actions of our government.

It's no different than vandalizing the payment box at a newsstand in an effort to squelch the press and free speech, and anyone who swallows that TOS bs is furthering the cause of repression.

FYI, cutting off sources of funding by intimidating banks is straight out of the military anti-insurgency handbook, which was also passed on by a leaker through WikiLeaks.

I guess that makes us insurgents now.

[TorchTheWitch]

12. how would PayPal have known if no one told them?

Do you seriously believe that PayPal pays any attention to who has accounts with them and regularly checks to see what the Pentagon thinks about those PayPal accounts? They have like a bazillion accounts! They aren't going to pay any attention to what each and every one of them is up to unless they get a head's up from someone.

For crap's sake, why does EVERYTHING about Wikileaks and Assange have to be some kooky conspiracy theory????

[Iterate]

14. You're missing the point entirely,

and I'm about as anti-conspiratorial as you can get.

Since their inception in 2005, they've had to make elaborate and in-depth arrangements not only for data security, encryption for submissions, privacy controls and the like, but for financial arrangements as well. Each link in the chain is carefully thought out and coordinated for the protection of whistle-blowers, whistle-blower defense funds, donors, journalists, everyone else in the chain. Plus they've had more than a few lawsuits. The whole time they've been dealing with bad actors and vulnerable people and they know better than anyone else how deadly serious it is.

These are not cowboys who just setup a donor button on a website, sign-up with PayPal and call it done. It doesn't work that way; PayPal knew because WikiLeaks told them, worked with them, made sure privacy and security could be maintained with them, in the same careful manner as they have tried with the whole operation.

Assange & Co. have talked about it on several occasions, written about it, and bloggers and other journalists have as well. Just make the effort to find out what they're all about.

[TorchTheWitch]

16. noooooooo, you're missing the point

They broke the TOS with PayPal and PayPal found out. PayPal doesn't go searching through all their clients' accounts looking for who is breaking their terms of service. I'm sure Wikileaks went through elaborate security measures of the funds with PayPal, but that doesn't mean that Wikileaks told them that they'd be breaking the TOS. In fact, I'd bet cash money that they went out of their way to disguise from PayPal that they would be breaking the TOS. I'm sure they let PayPal know that what they were doing was perfectly legitimate - hell, Wikileaks believes what they're doing is still perfectly legitimate. Do you seriously believe that Wikileaks told PayPal that they would be revealing stolen classified documents and would be encouraging and promoting the theft of such documents to be given to them to reveal when it breaks the TOS? Is there some reason I'm to believe that PayPal for some bizzare reason agreed to waive their TOS just for Wikileaks when they wouldn't do such a thing for anyone else? Please.

[Teaser]

4. I am uninterested in your opinion

as to whether what Paypal did was wrong or right. I have already decided that issue for myself, and it is irrelevant to the question I asked.


As for your latter point, paypal was simply one node of the financial machinery that has been blocked. WL's swiss bank has also just shut down their account.

So how does one "donate" without paypal? Through another service or via the mail. How does one do it if all the banks in the world are pressured not to process your transactions?

[TorchTheWitch]

7. I approve of PayPal cutting off use of their service

They have a policy concerning what is acceptable use of their service and Wikileaks broke it. PayPal needs to be concerned about it's own liability as well. I don't approve of a company making exceptions for one customer that they wouldn't for another. That's hardly fair. Wikileaks is responsible to use someone else's service in accordance with the agreed upon terms when they signed up to use the service, but they agreed to the terms in order to use the service knowingly not adhering to the terms and they got caught. They probably should have concidered they might get caught and figured out another way for people to donate so they wouldn't have had to worry about this.

Every business has to figure out the best way to accept monies in a way that adheres to laws, rules and policies and somehow they manage just fine.

Why is it PayPal's concern that Wikileaks had their bank account shut down? Not their problem, nor should it be. Again, this is something that Wikileaks should have considered and taken the time and effort to come up with ways for people to donate and be able to use that donated money without these problems.

It isn't my job to figure this out for Wikileaks, it's their job and they screwed that part up.

Look, if your going to be doing questionably legal or even outright illegal things that require an influx of funds from a variety of sources you need to put in the effort to do that in a way that protects that influx of funds. There are plenty of nefarious organizations that have managed to figure this out. Their biggest mistake was not realizing that this would end up being a problem and tried to operate as if nothing and no one could touch them concerning their business dealings. How wise was it to use the name of Wikileaks or Assange's name on their bank account not having the foresight to see that at some point their activities would be causing heads to explode all over the world and prepared for that concerning their money stream? They managed to figure out how to protect their work product and themselves in all sorts of clever ways, surely they could have come up with clever ways to protect the funds.

[DearAbby]

2. Both

Setting up individual accounts of at least a hundred people. Alternate them randomly on daily or hourly basis. *if needed, via their website donate link. they can draw out the funds, send money orders via the Postal service signed by John Q Public, Anywhere USA. or Anywhere World.

[Kip Humphrey]

6. Set up mail drops to receive xmas cash gift cards & cash (euros)

[HipChick]

8. This is totally open to a nigerian fraud type scheme..

cash is only the way to go..risks and all..

[PBS Poll-435]

17. Attach a C-note to a pigeon and pray it gets there. nt

[laughingliberal]

18. There's still snail mail. Perhaps preloaded gift cards? nm

[eShirl]

19. too bad they can't come up with a model in the future which requires no money

or can they