New Obstacles for WikiLeaks and Founder

As the political storm over their release of 250,000 secret American diplomatic cables continues, the WikiLeaks Web site and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing new legal and operational challenges from Swedish prosecutors and from one of the online payment services that have been used to channel donations to the whistle-blowing organization.
Related The Lede Blog: PayPal Suspends WikiLeaks Account (December 4, 2010)
PayPal, one of the most widely used online payment services, severed ties to WikiLeaks, following similar moves by the e-commerce Web site Amazon and the domain name company EveryDNS.net. In a statement dated Friday, PayPal said that it had “permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks.”
It added that the action had been taken “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,” and said that “the account holder” had been notified.
WikiLeaks’ Twitter feed, on which Mr. Assange and his associates responded vehemently to the earlier actions by Amazon and EveryDNS, said in an early morning message on Saturday that PayPal had “surrendered to U.S. government pressure,” a charge that WikiLeaks had previously made in the case of the other Internet service suspensions.
Clicking on a PayPal donation link at the WikiLeaks Web site produced a notice stating that “this recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
Mr. Assange and his associates have been careful to disclose little about the organization’s finances, or the amounts of money that the organization has raised, but they have said that they have a diffuse online network for soliciting donations and channeling the money that is robust enough to withstand any attempt to choke its financial lifeline.
Attempts to obtain reaction from the Obama administration to the allegation that the United States was involved in a bid to isolate WikiLeaks were not immediately successful. Since WikiLeaks began releasing secret Pentagon documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq months ago, officials have said that the Pentagon and the Justice Department have been studying possible criminal actions, as well as policies to prevent future leaks of secret documents, but no punitive measures have been announced.
Within hours of Amazon’s action in denying WikiLeaks use of its online servers for posting the secret documents and other materials, Mr. Assange and his associates shifted to a new server in Switzerland, and a new domain name, www.wikileaks.ch. Mr. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian and former computer hacker, has said that he is confident his organization can outwit any efforts by governments to shut down WikiLeaks.
Meanwhile, Mr. Assange continues to face the threat of arrest in Britain in a case of sexual improprieties being investigated in Sweden.
Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, said Friday that Marianne Ny, the chief prosecutor in the case, had distributed a newly drafted version of a European arrest warrant issued last week asking governments across the continent to arrest Mr. Assange and extradite him to Sweden for questioning in the case.
Two separate Swedish requests for Mr. Assange’s arrest, one through the 188 member countries of Interpol and the other through countries that belong to the Eurowarrant network, were distributed nearly three weeks ago, but only made public by Sweden last week. Mark Stephens, Mr. Assange’s lawyer in London, said Saturday that British officials had rejected the European arrest warrant on Thursday on the grounds that it lacked supporting paperwork. Ms. Rosander, the spokeswoman in Stockholm, said the warrant had been reissued with the requested documentation on Friday.
Mr. Assange has strongly denied the charges, and WikiLeaks has dismissed them as “dirty tricks” meant to punish him for his organization’s work.
Mr. Assange, who has not been seen in public since an appearance in Geneva on Nov. 5, is believed to be staying with friends somewhere in southeastern England, outside London.
Whether Scotland Yard planned to take action against him in the light of the reissued European warrant remained unclear on Saturday.

Posted in: Wiki Leaks