A Threat to America is a Threat to Bank of America

READ – A list of every organization and company that has so far shut the door on Wikileaks.

Speculative Fiction:

The widespread lockout of Wikileaks causes a proliferation of third-party “Pirate Party” services for financial, information, and other infrastructure. In the course of 3-4 weeks, an entire shadow internet, banking, media, and even certain physical logistics network is set up. Run by… who?

Clearly a total fiction, because even if there was enough public ire to demand these “diaspora” services, they could not just spring from nowhere. Money, servers, time, skill, etc. All necessary, and highly doubtful that these could be put together quickly enough to take advantage of the outrage of pro-Wikileakers willing to migrate right now.

But infrastructure is very important. Wikileaks is forced to hang on as it can, finding sanctuary where possible, and hiding its infrastructure that is still solid.

But all of these lockouts is making me think, mostly because I can’t think of anything similar in recent history where so many companies have turned against a (somewhat) public group like this. Feel free to chime in if you can think of a comparison, but meanwhile, let me run down this list of facts and presumed facts.

- Wikileaks publishes documents that are marked secret by the US government, in active disregard of their request, though it seems highly dubious that doing so is actually illegal. They are not the first group to do something like this, though the scale and press regarding the leak are seemingly unprecedented.

- The direct infrastructure by which they publicize these documents is attacked both by DDoS “groups”, and by commerical ISPs. Note: what was attacked was not the infrastructure by which they published the documents, which were released to media, and are no doubt safe in many repositories all over the world. Their web presence, which channels their publicity, was attacked. Their public “power to the people” face was attacked, not their actual existence. Also, their main page for channeling donations: which was the beginning of the attack on their financial infrastructure.

- The second level of infrastructure to be attacked is the finance. The details of Wikileaks finances are not known, maintained with a good deal of secrecy and front-groups. The reason for this is that, undoubtedly, this infrastructure would be extremely vulnerable to attack, either by governments or lawsuits by those Wikileaks has confronted. Julian Assange admits as much in this WSJ article, that also gives some background into what parts of this infrastructure are known.

- The criminal allegations against Julian Assange in Sweden notwithstanding, there are no criminal allegations against Wikileaks the organization, nor any companies or entities that are part of their infrastructure. Plenty of talk, but no warrants, charges, etc.

– Wikileaks has had their infrastructure attacked before. In 2008 details of anonymous Cayman Islands accounts from the Bank Julius Baer company were leaked via Wikileaks, allegedly exposing money laundering, corruption, etc. The bank responded by suing, and getting an injunction to force Dynabot, Wikileaks’ domain registrar at the time, to drop Wikileaks. After civil liberties groups came to Wikileaks aid, the judge lifted the injunction. They were also sued by Kaupthing Bank over documents exposing irregularities and write-offs prior to the Icelandic Bank collapse.

- Wikileaks claims it is holding information from inside Bank of America.

Now: let’s look at the hits on the publicity infrastructure. Companies involved are Tableau Software, Amazon, and everyDNS. Financial Infrastructure? PayPal, PostFinance, MasterCard, and Visa.

I’m going to suggest that these hits are not “politically” motivated. Tableau Software admits to being pressured by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman, but there is no other evidence that the US government or any other government pressured any of the other groups. Naturally, they could be lying. But they could also have motivation of their own. And a company’s biggest motivation is money.

Amazon could have faced a potential Christmas season boycott in America from anti-Wikileaks ideologues. That argument seems logical, but how many Christmas shoppers would forgo their gifts in order to make a point about a website isn’t clear. But would any of the others have faced boycott? Would Americans really boycott MasterCard or Visa for refusing to dump Wikileaks, when most of us owe a significant amount of money to these companies already? Even PayPal, the credit card of the internet, suffering much of a reaction seems implausible. Or a Swiss bank? Maybe everyDNS could have been susceptible to boycott, but it still seems doubtful.

What about the link to Bank of America? All of the financial institutions that have pulled moves on Wikileaks’ infrastructure have close ties to Bank of America, with the exception of Tableau and everyDNS. “Close ties” doesn’t even cover it. They are part of a mutual system that generates billions of dollars in revenue a year for all of them.

This is pure speculation. This is just looking at information I found in 15 minutes of Internet research. But it seems like a judgment one would have to at least propose. What could the US government or an irate public really do to any of these institutions? But what could Bank of America do? Or what could Wikileaks potentially do against any of these entities? It seems quite likely that this is not just a rebuttal to the Embassy Cables leak. It seems like a financial offensive in its own right. A lawsuit is premature–there would have to be an actual case made, and an assumption of guilt on the part of the suing party like in the case of Bank Julian Baers or Kaupthing. But how easy is it to call a fellow member on a board of directors, and get some strings pulled? All too easy. So easy, that it would be surprising if they didn’t.

This recent link is big news, and really catapults Wikileaks into a spotlight. Also, the delayed release of these cables means that we are going to be hearing the word “Wikileaks” every day for over a year, at least. Wikileaks is a threat, not in an ideological free-speech hacker-anarchism sort of way, but in a very real way to people might be exposed, and potentially lose millions if not billions of dollars.

I don’t know which would make me more paranoid and suspicious: if the US government was after me, or if the Bank of America was after me.

And also, think of this: if the US government isn’t as interested in going after Wikileaks or isn’t as able to through its channels as financial entities are, what does this say for the future of you and me? At what point will be need a shadow infrastructure to escape from the reach of these instutitons?

Speculative indeed.