Swiss Bank Finds Technicality To Freeze Wikileaks Bank Account

from the new-interest-in-terms-of-service dept

Following Paypal's decision to cut off Wikileaks' account, claiming a heretofore unnoticed "terms of service violation," it appears that the Swiss bank account Julian Assange set up to take donations has been frozen for similarly dubious reasons. They apparently "just noticed" that Assange falsely claimed that Geneva was his place of residence. Since that is not the case (should he have just written "on the run"?), the Swiss Post has decided to freeze the account. It's amazing how all of a sudden all of these companies have found weird "terms of service" violations to use as a reason to cut off Wikileaks. This is another reason why terms of service are generally a joke (and why it's crazy to suggest that violating terms of service should be a criminal offense). You can almost always find something that violates those terms of service. Of course, one company that appears to not be backing down (not surprisingly) is Flattr, who is noting that you can still Flattr Wikileaks (you can Flattr us here at Techdirt too, if you'd like -- just look next to each post) and mentioning that one of the very reasons they created Flattr was to avoid censorship.

Filed Under: bank account, wikileaks
Companies: swiss post, wikileaks