In a video just posted on WikiLeaks, Julian Assange announced that WikiLeaks will temporarily halt publication because the site needs to find alternative ways to pay its bills. Measures taken to cut off the organisation’s revenue have effectively strangled it.
No, Julian Assange is not inviting you for a long walk in the woods — he’s making a heartfelt appeal to the people of the world to pretty please help him keep WikiLeaks going. Even as the global movement of hackers and activists that WikiLeaks helped build continues to grow, WikiLeaks is in trouble. According to Assange, who looks very charming as he strolls along a country lane, he has no choice but to halt WikiLeaks’ campaign of publishing state secrets. The organisation has lost 95 per cent of its revenue — tens of millions of dollars — since financial institutions agreed to stop processing donations to the site. Last December, Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union all said that they would no longer work with WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is encouraging donations via MoneyGram, Bitcoin or any of the other payment systems that haven’t been blocked. No word on how much WikiLeaks needs, but Assange must be really desperate if he’s willing to eat the humble pie like this. [Wikileaks via Daily Telegraph]