Bank of America hits WikiLeaks with financial 'Denial of Service' attack

by Steve Ragan - Dec 18 2010, 10:16

Joining Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Post Finance, Bank of America said on Friday it would decline to process payments made to WikiLeaks. News of the payment denial arrived just 24 hours after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released on bail and rumors of a financial leak began spreading.

With more than 57 million customers, Bank of America (BoA) is one of the world’s largest financial institutions. In a statement issued late Friday evening, BoA said it is joining actions previously announced by Visa Europe, MasterCard, PayPal, and others (Post Finance), adding that it “will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks.”

“This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments,” it explained.

Earlier this month, in separate statements to The Tech Herald, Visa Europe and MasterCard confirmed their denial of access due to questions over WikiLeaks' business.
 
Visa Europe explained it was dropping payments to WikiLeaks “pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules.”

MasterCard simply stated the suspension would remain “until the situation is resolved.” What that situation is exactly, it would not say.

eBay-owned PayPal cited AUP violations for its decision to suspend WikiLeaks’ use of its network. PayPal is the only company, despite there being no charges or evidence that says otherwise, that labeled WikiLeaks as illegal.

PayPal said on its company blog that WikiLeaks’ access was “permanently restricted... 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.”

In each case, the financial service businesses revoked access due to something that has never been proven in any court of law. It hasn’t been mentioned, at least not in the major coverage of 'Cablegate', but the moment they revoked access to WikiLeaks, these five organizations were starting their own Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack.

This DoS attack impacts the way WikiLeaks can collect donations, and denies innocent consumers the ability to do so. Given the freedom stripped from consumers, you’d think there would be an issue over financial censorship.

Yet nothing has been said, and perhaps that is because WikiLeaks supporters are in the minority. The financial giants know there services are needed, and the consumer simply has to take things as they are. Else, it's spend using cash alone.

Anyone with a bank account can attest to the fact that you cannot escape the relationship with Visa or MasterCard. You can, of course, cancel your PayPal account, but protected and legitimate forms of online payments are hard to come by.

On Twitter, WikiLeaks asked: “Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advice is to place your funds somewhere safer.”

That comment could lead one to assume there is something wrong with having a BoA account, aside from the censoring of its customer's spending power, but it could also mean that something big is coming.

Earlier this month, rumors started to spread that WikiLeaks has details on a major financial institution. Could BoA be the subject of the next leak? Is this the reason for the moves it is now making? No one yet knows, and its press statement is lacking in detail.

According to the Reykjavik Grapevine, the Icelandic Parliamentary General Committee has met to discuss the ban placed on WikiLeaks by Visa and MasterCard. The committee meeting centered on what legal grounds the two credit firms had for the ban, requesting proof that their actions were more than a decision taken because of foreign sources.

Meanwhile, DataCell, the company that processed Visa and MasterCard transactions for WikiLeaks, said it will be taking legal action against both companies.

“We can not believe WikiLeaks would even create scratch at the brand name of Visa. The suspension of payments towards WikiLeaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers,” the DataCell statement said.

“Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to WikiLeaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish. It will probably hurt their brand much, much more to block payments towards WikiLeaks than to have them occur,” it added.

The major issue is one of financial freedom. You can’t use a debit or credit card from your bank without it coming from MasterCard or Visa most times. Likewise, you cannot close your BoA account in protest if it is the only bank in town, or its rates and fees make switching cost prohibitive.

It’s your money, but it doesn’t matter. Banking institutions can and will tell you what to do with it. Scary, eh?

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