Bad Aftertaste

Thus far, WikiLeaks is totally blameless — no court of law has passed sentence on the Internet platform.

MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, Swiss bank Postfinance and now the Bank of America: More and more institutions have canceled their contracts with WikiLeaks and are refusing to transfer payments to the Internet platform. Seen strictly from a legal point of view, there’s nothing at all wrong with that. As long as other avenues are still available and there’s no monopoly, most economic systems do not force companies to do business with one another. Nonetheless, it has left a bad aftertaste.

Regardless of what one thinks about the leaking of thousands of classified American documents, WikiLeaks hasn’t been charged with anything. No court has yet indicted it. It’s not even clear that WikiLeaks has committed any crime, and donations to organizations in the United States are completely legal.

MasterCard and the others aren’t driven by moral concerns. If they were, they would be hard put to explain why they transfer donations to racist — and in the United States, completely legal — organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The only explanation remaining is that they are reacting to pressure from the U.S. government or from fear of public opinion in America.

It’s exactly that sort of thing that might convince people otherwise critical of WikiLeaks to defect to the Internet platform’s camp.