Banks and WikiLeaks
A bank’s ability to block payments to a legal entity, as Bank of America has done with WikiLeaks, raises troubling questions.
December 25, 2010A New York Times editorial today on the recent actions of Bank America, Visa, PayPal, and Mastercard to block payments to Wikileaks says the moves raise "troubling questions," given the fact that Wikileaks has not been charged or convicted of any crime:
- What would happen if a clutch of big banks decided that a particularly irksome blogger or other organization was "too risky"? What if they decided -- one by one -- to shut down financial access to a newspaper that was about to reveal irksome truths about their operations? This decision should not be left solely up to business-as-usual among the banks.
As anticipated, the WikiLeaks saga is becoming a test case of US First Amendment rights and Freedom of the Press.
SO: WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISH THE WIKILEAKS BANK OF AMERICA PAPERS NEXT MONTH? OR WILL THE NEW YORK TIMES CAVE IN?
LINKS:
[1] 10-12-25 Banks and WikiLeaks - NYT
http://www.scribd.com/doc/46072423