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DataCell launches legal action against Visa and MasterCard

The credit card giants have no longer just got distributed denial of service attacks from WikiLeaks supporters to contend with.

By Jennifer Scott, 9 Dec 2010 at 09:48

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The company which facilitates payments to WikiLeaks is taking on the big guns of the credit card industry in an attempt to open up payment processes once more.

DataCell has announced it will be taking “immediate legal actions” against Visa and MasterCard, who have both this week suspended processing donations to the whistle-blowing website.

The company claimed it was loosing revenue due to the payment suspension, as well as WikiLeaks losing donations.

“DataCell is only doing work for Wikileaks in helping them processing credit card payments,” said Andreas Fink, chief executive (CEO) of DataCell. “We are helping an honourable organisation to get its funding it needs to sustain the load on their servers and deliver the messages the public wants to read.”

He claimed the blocking of payments by Visa and MasterCard could severely damage the two companies’ reputations and make them lose customers.

“This might be very well the end of the credit card business worldwide,” he added.

The legal action is just the latest issue faced by the companies who have become targets of WikiLeaks supporters.

A hacker group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ targeted MasterCard’s website yesterday with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and successfully took the site down. Reports suggest Visa’s website could be the next target.

WikiLeaks is responsible for leaking the contents of confidential US Embassy cable communications to a number of newspapers around the world, including The Guardian in the UK.

Founder of the website, Julian Assange, was this week arrested in London after he was accused of committing sexual assault in Sweden back in August. The Australian has been refused bail and is waiting to fight against an extradition order to send him back to Sweden.

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4 comments

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How to unsettle the world

WikiLeaks has done far more damage than good by setting neighbor against neighbor,country against country.
Should this fiasco cause the loss of live, then Julian Assange and his team should be held accountable.
All this leaked information only serves to unsettle an already unsettled world, and at face value looks like the mark of an egoist.
I might add that I have no love for secretive scheming Governments, but this is not going to make the world a safer place and more open. It will only make Governments and organizations much more secretive in the future.

By normal1 on Friday Dec 10

Democracy Is Always Unsettled

All governments attempt to keep secrets. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes not. Sometimes it is as well they do and sometimes otherwise. Where we choose to live in democracies, we also accept the cost of truth, as well as its benefits. However obtained, the truth is what people in a democracy sign up for. To make it a crime for people to expose it is anti democratic.

By Auracious on Friday Dec 10

Political?

I find it quite shocking that Visa and Mastercard have blocked payments like this. I always understood these companies to be devoid of political intervention, obviously not. It just goes to show how the old adage, 'the truth hurts' remains a valid reminder that the word 'freedom' is just a figure of speech!
Michael

By searcher_n3 on Friday Dec 10

RE:

I hope someone posts some very embarrassing documents about Visa and Mastercard to Wikileaks - that will make these companies think twice about pulling the rug.

By RJD123 on Friday Dec 10