The leak site has temporarily shut down in order to go into an aggressive fund raising mode. Yeah, it’s something we’ve heard from a million arts organizations over the years but this has a different wrinkle. Wikileaks honcho Julian Assange says that a financial blockade from Bank of America, PayPal, Western Union, Visa, and MasterCard has destroyed 95% of the organization’s revenue.
Many financial institutions stopped doing business with the site after it published a trove of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables late last year, and donations have been stymied.
U.S. authorities have said disclosing the classified information was illegal and caused risks to individuals and national security.
“WikiLeaks has, however, ignored our requests not to release or disseminate any U.S. documents it may possess and has continued its well-established pattern of irresponsible, reckless, and frankly dangerous actions,” U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said last month.
Assange said Monday that WikiLeaks’ publications are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and said there were no judgments or charges against his organization.
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