[HPLovecraft]

The ****s really hitting the fan now:

A group of whistleblowers including Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon papers; Katharine Gun, the former GCHQ translator who leaked documents about the Iraq war; and Craig Murray, Britain's former ambassador to Uzebekistan who sacked after revealing torture, have put out a statement in support of WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has teased the genie of transparency out of a very opaque bottle, and powerful forces in America, who thrive on secrecy, are trying desperately to stuff the genie back in.

Ellsberg is quoted as saying:

Every attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.

Payment processor DataCell threatens to sue Visa and Mastercard over canceling WikiLeaks donations

http://www.datacell.com/news.php

The international credit card company, Visa, today ordered payments processor DataCell to suspend all of its transactions, just 23 hours after it cut off all donations being made to WikiLeaks.

DataCell, a small Icelandic company which facilitates transfers made by credit cards including Visa and Mastercard, says it will take up "immediate legal actions" to ensure that donations can once again be made to WikiLeaks.

Andreas Fink, the chief executive of DataCell, today warned that the powerful "duopoly" of Visa and Mastercard, which have both suspended payments to WikiLeaks in the past week, could spell "the end of the credit card business worldwide."

"Visa is hurting Wikileaks and DataCell in high figures," Fink said in a statement. "Putting all payments on hold for seven days or more is one thing but rejecting all further attempts to donate is making the donations impossible.

"This does clearly create massive financial losses to Wikileaks which seems to be the only purpose of this suspension. This is not about the brand of Visa, this is about politics and Visa should not be involved in this."

[ . . . ]

If you want to donate, use wiretransfers. And make sure your local Visa partner knows that it is your sincere wish to donate to Wikileaks using your Visa card. We will do our best in the meantime to support Wikileaks.

ALSO, the former Australian Foreign Minister has just come out and blamed the US for the leaks, saying it is their responsibility to protect their own security.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11945558

In an interview with Reuters news agency, Mr Rudd said: "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorised release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that."

Mr Rudd, the former prime minister who was replaced by Julia Gillard in June, added: "I think there are real questions to be asked about the adequacy of [the US] security systems and the level of access that people have had to that material.

"The core responsibility, and therefore legal liability, goes to those individuals responsible for that initial unauthorised release."