Anonymous, PayPal and WikiLeaks: The Grudge That Keeps On Grudging
TechNewsWorld
Anonymous has once again taken the fight to PayPal for the online payment system's continuing refusal to facilitate donations to WikiLeaks. This time, though, Anons have opted against launching a surgical hack maneuver or lobbing a DDoS stinkbomb. Instead, they're calling for a boycott. Meanwhile, Mozilla fires up a Gecko project, Googe+ contemplates names, and Apple reportedly eyes Hulu.
Remember WikiLeaks? It's still around, it's still somewhat leaky, and it's still very much loved by the amorphous hacker entity known as "Anonymous." Anons and WikiLeaks both generally enjoy breaking down barriers of secrecy and scattering what they find into the public view, though they may tend to work with different styles.
Besides exposing secrets, one thing Anonymous has been known to do is attack those who would attack or even opt to shun WikiLeaks. This was the case with online payment servicePayPal. If you want to donate to WikiLeaks, you can't do it through PayPal, because the company will refuse the transaction. This is officially due to violations of PayPal's acceptable use policy, though at one point the company reportedly said it was under pressure from the U.S. State Department.Whatever the reason, PayPal's refusal to pass donations on to WikiLeaks has angered Anonymous so much that it initially went after the company in its usual way: attacking its website. It happened, then it stopped happening, and months went by.
But the grudge lives on, and as law enforcement officials continue to arrest people on suspicion of involvement with Anonymous attacks, the group has decided to once again take a shot at PayPal, which it claims is encouraging and assisting police crackdowns.
This time, though, it seems Anonymous is being a little more civilly disobedient. Instead of warming up the Low Orbit Ion Cannon once again and nuking the site's servers, it's calling for a good old-fashioned boycott. Anons want all supporters and like-minded parties to cancel their PayPal accounts and stop using the service until the company allows donations to WikiLeaks to go through.
Hacktivists like the ones in Anonymous insist that the hacking they do is online political protest and shouldn't be punished in the same way as profit-motivated thievery. But law enforcement doesn't see it that way, so calling for a boycott gives Anons a chance to jab at PayPal without adding to the list of charges authorities want to slap them with.
Whether that boycott actually hurts PayPal is another matter. When we contacted the company shortly after the boycott began, it claimed it hadn't noticed so much as a blip on the radar.
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Posted by Blog'sMania
on 8:57 PM.
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