logo logo
Donate
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Social Justice
    • Racial Justice
    • Climate Justice
    • Disability Justice
    • Economic Justice
    • Health Justice
    • Immigration
    • LGBTQ+
  • Civic News
  • Nonprofit Leadership
    • Board Governance
    • Equity-Centered Management
    • Finances
    • Fundraising
    • Human Resources
    • Organizational Culture
    • Philanthropy
    • Power Dynamics
    • Strategic Planning
    • Technology
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Leading Edge Membership
  • Newsletters
  • Webinars

WikiLeaks Founder Arrested—What’s Next?

Rick Cohen
December 7, 2010

December 6, 2010; Source: TECH.BLORGE.com | Does the arrest of Julian Assange in London today put an end to his WikiLeaks operation and the disruption it has caused to American authorities with its leaks of secret military and State Department documents? Legal experts have been debating whether Assange could be successfully prosecuted for violating the Espionage Act or whether he would defend his actions with First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of the press arguments, but he was actually arrested in connection with rape charges in Sweden, not for his WikiLeaks activities.

Assange may be wily and furtive, but WikiLeaks is not a one-man operation, and his arrest doesn’t quash the problem posed by the existence of the WikiLeaks website and its possession of hordes of still unreleased documents. As a result, the WikiLeaks site has been hit with a flood of denial of service attacks that resulted in EveryDNS.net’s terminating the wikileaks.org domain name.

So far, Wikileaks has been able to stay in operation by moving to other domains such as wikileaks.ch (Switzerland), wikileaks.de (Germany), and wikileaks.fi (Finland). How can the U.S. put the hurt to WikiLeaks, especially as Assange and his allies threaten a “doomsday” type of release that sounds like it might have been designed by Russian Premier Dmitri Kissoff in Dr. Strangelove? The answer is money: kill its ability to receive donations.

The servicer for donations to WikiLeaks has long been PayPal, a subsidiary of eBay. PayPal issued a statement before Assange’s arrest that it has “permanently restricted” the account that WikiLeaks used for processing donations “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.”

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

WikiLeaks has access to other web-based donation processing sites, but PayPal is the industry’s behemoth and little challenged by competitors. Was PayPal pressured by the U.S. government to shed its donation processing role? It is hard to imagine that it didn’t get a call from chagrined officials.

Besides its vaunted PayPal donation button service, eBay has strong connections to the U.S. nonprofit sector. The chairman of eBay’s board of directors is eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, known to nonprofits as co-founder and chairman of the Omidyar Network, a foundation known for its strong commitment to transparency and openness in government (with generous grant support of the Sunlight Foundation, for example) and with close connections to the Obama Administration, both through Omidyar’s campaign contributions and the Network’s formal relationship with the Social Innovation Fund.

Other eBay board members include Richard T. Schlosberg III, former chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Times and the Denver Post and former president and CEO of the Packard Foundation, and Tom Tierney, co-founder of the Bridgespan Group, the nonprofit consulting firm working with some of the nation’s largest foundations.

Regardless of the legal issues surrounding the Assange and his organization, the internet battles will undoubtedly continue. Not long after the PayPal announcement, a group of hackers called Anonymous launched a denial of service attack in support of WikiLeaks aimed at the PayPal blog. Who ever thought modern warfare would be fought by people throwing torrents of junk e-mail at their opponents’ websites? —Rick Cohen

About the author
Rick Cohen

Rick joined NPQ in 2006, after almost eight years as the executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP). Before that he played various roles as a community worker and advisor to others doing community work. He also worked in government. Cohen pursued investigative and analytical articles, advocated for increased philanthropic giving and access for disenfranchised constituencies, and promoted increased philanthropic and nonprofit accountability.

More about: Nonprofit News

Our Voices Are Our Power.

Journalism, nonprofits, and multiracial democracy are under attack. At NPQ, we fight back by sharing stories and essential insights from nonprofit leaders and workers—and we pay every contributor.

Can you help us protect nonprofit voices?

Your support keeps truth alive when it matters most.
Every single dollar makes a difference.

Donate now
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

You might also like
How Can the Nonprofit Field Better Support Volunteerism?
Jan Masaoka
Return to Office: What’s Happening in the Nonprofit Sector and Why?
Sydney Nicole Sweeney
Latine Community Groups Mobilize to Defend Medicaid Against Cuts
María Constanza Costa
New York and Other States Move to Fix Nonprofit Contracting Delays
Lauren Girardin
What to the Immigrant Is the Fourth of July?
Rebekah Barber
On the Front Lines: How Campus Organizing Can Inform Movements Today
Aashna Miharia

Upcoming Webinars

Group Created with Sketch.
July 24th, 2:00 pm ET

Organizing in Divided Times

The Relational Infrastructure We Need to Protect Democracy

Register
Group Created with Sketch.
September 24th-25th, 2:00 pm ET

Advanced QuickBooks for Nonprofits

Expert Guidance for Experienced QuickBooks Users

Register

    
You might also like
US Capitol Building
Trump Budget Bill Spells Trouble for Nonprofits
Isaiah Thompson
A group of about two dozen students, many wearing blue shirts, walk in the rain in front of the US House of Representatives.
How Nonprofits and Activists Can Oppose Trump’s “Big...
Matthew Rozsa
Conservatives Attack Nonprofits on Capitol Hill
Isaiah Thompson

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright
  • Donate
  • Editorial Policy
  • Funders
  • Submissions

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.