Give me back my money

Dear governments: Truth hurts.

WikiLeaks has done the right thing and I'm happy that there are so many people advocating it. The recent shutdown of wikileaks.com and move to .ch, Amazon's boot out from their servers and PayPal's reaction are a pathetic display of those wannabe oppressors. Treating people like dumb sheeps is no longer an opportunity thanks to the net.

Just closed my paypal account because of this. If you want to do this too, just click here: https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_close-account

In response to that I donated again!

Don't forget there are other methods to donate:
http://213.251.145.96/support.html

the minecraft author also had huge problems with paypal. they locked his account because they were suspicious about the sudden amount of money he was receiving. paypal sucks.

Yeah, Paypal, Amazon now today Mastercard - those companies really start pissing me off. Unfortunately they also have some near monopolies (especially paypal when it comes to web-payment), so they are hard to avoid. I won't use Amazon for for buying x-mas presents for their action of kicking wikileak of their cloud-server. As for paypal - the image got ruined through those actions and I hope it won't pay off for them in the long term. I will also try switching to alternative payments where I can, but with Mastercard now stopping wikileak payments it starts to get hard to find easy alternatives.

Aside from that - does anyone else feel that those articles in the wikileaks haven't contained any surprises so far? Basically they describe politicans simply the same way they got described by the press already.

Also - having read in Spiegel that 1 million (!) americans had already access to those documents I would be very surprised if your own intelligence agency wouldn't have managed to gain access to them anyway a long time ago. Otherwise they would really suck! And that means - people like our Chancellor or foreign minister knew most likely already a long time what the american ambassador talked about them. There's really no alternative - either they are all just playing some act right now or our intelligence agency is so bad that it should be closed down.

As it seems a lot a people has this problem (or what should I call it) with PayPal: http://thepiratebay.org/blog/185.

well, I too closed my paypal account minutes after joining the bycott paypal movement over at fb :)

honestly, never thought I'd live to see this level of corruption: US government now pressurizing private companies to fulfill their agenda? If the lies about 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq were not enough, THIS has really woken me up. Seriously considering joining the Anonymous ;)

just in case if someone is wondering what or who "Anonymus" is, just google them ;) For a more direct approach, check out here: http://twitter.com/Op_Payback

Personally, I'm starting to agree more and more with the Peoples vs. Govenrnments issue. Just fed-up of the imperialist US agenda anyway, and they went a step too far this time, so... payback time ;)

About Op_Payback - damaging the Web by doing DDos-attacks on companies is probably one of the worst ways possible to react. This way we destroy the very medium which we are using to distribute information more freely. The only effect this will have is that it is helping the agenda of politicians which want to have stricter internet laws. Boycotting companies is way better.

@CuteAlient
"damaging the Web by doing DDos-attacks on companies..."
I'd beg to differ.
One, the web is not as fragile you seem to think :) DDos attacks only create a temporary disruption, as do real-world protests do, which is actually the whole point. I have never seen or heard of some permamnent damage causd by a DDos attack, or by a GreenPeace protest rally (which also disrupts various RL systems depending on its nature). On the web, the DDos attacks are simply a way of making a point that we, the PEOPLE, are displeased!

TWO, for a lot many years now I too have lived in the belief that confronting politicians/governments directly is probably a bad idea and would only result in more opression of the people. Well, my silence/inaction obviously dont seem to be having any positive effect.

Its probably time governments (particularly of the US) should be reminded what democracy is all about and who holds the ultimate power in a democratic system.

In the world of law, there is term "criminal negligence", which, simply put, means when you see a crime being committed and stay quite about it, you are as guilty as the criminals.

Make sure you're not becoming a party to the crimes being committed by your government just by looking the other way.

DDos attacks are generally generated by abusing web-resources. You don't need many people to do that - you only need control of enough servers/bandwidth. And so you don't really show that people are behind an attack, but just that some people have scripts that can generate enough traffic. If this is meant to show the strength of a political opinion then spammers with their large bot-nets will become the most political influential persons in the world.

Also when I talk about destroying the Web I certainly don't talk about mechanical destruction but about destroying the foundations which make the web worth it. Making the web unreliable means free flow of information is stopped. Doing that in the name of information freedom is ridiculous! And you can bet those attacks will also used in the next discussion round about internet laws by the opponents of anonymity.

"... DDos attacks are generally generated by abusing web-resources"

Not really very correct to say that, depends who is conducting the attack and for what prupose. Yes, true, when a DDos attack is being conducted by organized elements for personal gain/corporate-rivalry/state-oppression then yes, its mostly done using botNets (hijacked computers of other people). What we're seeing now is a totally different type of DDos attakcs, labled by the media as "hacktivism" where a number of ordinary individuals voluntarily take part in a joint attack "using their own personal computers only" for the sole purpose of making a political point. No "web resources" are being "abused" by anyone.

"...Making the web unreliable means free flow of information is stopped. Doing that in the name of information freedom is ridiculous! "
How does such voluntary "hacktivism" makes the "web unrelaiable" and undermines "information freedom"? If it would, I'd agree with you, but you see, it dont!

Look at it from another perspective. A huge majority of ordinary people in a democratic system are usually peaceful people who prefer stability and stay away from street-protests. But this majority has had no way to make themselves heard. So you found that the government you elected is actualy getting corrupt and doing things you would not endorse in any way. What do you do now if you dont want to sit and wait another 4 years till the next election? What platform you have to make yourself heard and send a very clear message to the government that you are displeased! I would agree that whats emerging today as "hacktivism" is in its infancy and rather primitive, but it is surely providing that silent MAJORITY a way to be heard. It is emerging as a vital tool which so far has been missing from our democratic systems: a way for people to react immediatly and show thier disapproval without having to go out on the street. Its too cold out here anyway :)

Also, think of the implications. If a huge number of ordinary PEOPLE openly and voluntarily take partin, lets say a DDos attack against PayPal, is it necessarily a bad thing for PayPal. I would say actually it send a message to PayPal that WE, the PEOPLE are behind you, so you have no need to bend to illegal government pressure. If a private business organisation is forced to choose between upsetting the politicians or upsetting all their client-base, who do you think they would choose? If they could be sure their client-base is standing firm behind them, they could easily show their middle-finger to the state department. ;)

"How does such voluntary “hacktivism” makes the “web unrelaiable” and undermines “information freedom”?"

You can't the the information from the DDOS'ed websites anymore. Which means a part of the web got unreliable and you prevent people accessing the information there. Which is basically the exact same thing you seem to be protesting against... I can't really see much of a difference between killing websites by DDOS or by doing so via state-censorship. Actually state-censorship might in some cases at least have some democratic legitimation behind it. You're killing the idea of a free web if you start attacking sites which have a different opinion from you - no matter the reason.

I'm sorry - but I fight for information freedom even if people disagree with me. Which is basically the only point of information freedom anyway!

And as mentioned already above - you don't need people for DDOS. Sure it's one way of DDOS'ing getting a lot of people to participate, but it's a lot easier doing that with a few dedicated people and a bunch of good scripts. There isn't really much of a relation between people taking part in the protests and the effect of it, but the major relation is people knowing internet technology more or less (or being able to afford more bandwidth). Basically censorship through the right of the stronger (just "stronger" in a technical sense).

There is no message for Paypal except getting faster server or bigger bandwidth. They can't even tell if this are customers or just some random script-kiddies (and I would imagine the latter to be more likely!).

"How does such voluntary hacktivism make the web unreliable and undermines information freedom?"

You can't the the information from the DDOS'ed websites anymore. Which means a part of the web got unreliable and you prevent people accessing the information there. Which is basically the exact same thing you seem to be protesting against... I can't really see much of a difference between killing websites by DDOS or by doing so via state-censorship. Actually state-censorship might in some cases at least have some democratic legitimation behind it. You're killing the idea of a free web if you start attacking sites which have a different opinion from you - no matter the reason.

I'm sorry - but I fight for information freedom even if people disagree with me. Which is basically the only point of information freedom anyway!

And as mentioned already above - you don't need people for DDOS. Sure it's one way of DDOS'ing getting a lot of people to participate, but it's a lot easier doing that with a few dedicated people and a bunch of good scripts. There isn't really much of a relation between people taking part in the protests and the effect of it, but the major relation is people knowing internet technology more or less (or being able to afford more bandwidth). It's censorship through the right of the stronger (just "stronger" in a technical sense).

There is no message for Paypal except getting faster server or bigger bandwidth. They can't even tell if this are customers or just some random script-kiddies (and I would imagine the latter to be more likely!).