the companies themselves, from simple damage to their reputations and from civil or criminal liabilities
It serves Assange's narrative purposes, to claim that Wikileaks is the victim of shadowy governmental interventions, but in fact it also seems possible that the credit card companies' attorneys advised the companies to back away, on the grounds that Wikileaks might be engaged in actionable behavior that might leave the card companies vulnerable in court
As possible examples, one notes:
(1) Assange's gleeful encouraging of rumors that Wikileaks was about to drop a bombshell revelation about the bankm, which had the effect of see-sawing the bank's stock prices -- which might suggest market manipulation
(2) The Wikileaks effort to auction off a sneak-peek at an ambassador's emails, combined with an attempt to pre-notify everyone connected with the emails in any way, that they might be affected -- stinking a bit of extortion
(3) Assange's close associate peddling some stolen embassy cables to the Belorussian dictatorship -- a little game that can be read as a private espionage racket
The complete lack of transparency of Wikileaks itself, as an organization which allegedly promotes transparency, means that such questions cannot be resolved easily. The credit card companies probably don't want to be mixed up in anything like that, which might explain some of the statements we heard:
... "Visa Europe has taken action to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' Web site pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules" ... Last week, PayPal also permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks "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" ...
MasterCard, Visa Halt WikiLeaks Payments
December 7, 2010 12:15pm EST
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373967,00.asp
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