frontpage - 1:02 pm on Dec 9, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the research ppc_newbie. The misinformation out there is incredible...

Yes, the intentional distortion of facts is incredible.

Paypal political pressure? Not.

"PayPal was not contacted by any government organization in the U.S. or abroad. We restricted the account based on our Acceptable Use Policy review." Wiki’s latest release of highly sensitive cables sent by American envoys has breached its “acceptable use policy”, the US-based company said yesterday. A PayPal spokesman said his company cannot be used for any activities “that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity”. A spokeswoman for Paypal said: "We can confirm that there was an attempted DDoS attack on PayPal.com. The attack slowed some payments down for a short while but we remained fully operational throughout."

A State Department official also said the government department had not contacted Paypal. US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip Crowley tweeted: "The US government did not write to PayPal requesting any action regarding #WikiLeaks. Not true."

Who has made the assertion that websites have bowed to political pressure? The gang of hackers currently engaged in criminal activities targeting websites.

The much-quoted Anonymous, spokesperson, who goes by the moniker Coldblood, is vowing to take down anyone having an “anti-WikiLeaks agenda,” according to the BBC. “Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets,” he said.

Anonymous and Wikileaks have my full support.

Surprised that some folks here support criminal hacking of legitimate ecommerce and government sites and the disruption of innocent peoples lives. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Anonymous members launched their first distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack on Saturday, taking down PayPal's blog, ThePayPalBlog.com, for at least eight hours. Since then, they have taken down the websites of Visa, Mastercard and the Swiss Post Office bank for severing ties to WikiLeaks and the website of the Swedish prosecutor's office for pursuing Assange on allegations of sex crimes.

Aftonbladet said the official government website, [regeringen.se...] was offline for a few hours overnight to Thursday, publishing a screen shot which showed the server could not be reached.

Twitter itself could be the next target, according to a statement circulating online attributed to Anonymous and published by the Guardian UK. "We will fire at anything or anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks, including multibillion-dollar companies such as PayPal," the statement said. "Twitter, you're next for censoring #WikiLeaks discussion. The major sh$%storm has begun."

The group known as 4Chan had taken responsibility on Tuesday for using a denial-of-service attack to shut down the sites for Swiss bank PostFinance and lawyers in Sweden prosecuting sex allegations against WikiLeaks front man Julian Assange.

[edited by: frontpage at 1:19 pm (utc) on Dec 9, 2010]