Slashdot is reporting the PayPal has made a policy decision to suspend and freeze the account of Courage to Resist, a non-profit organization collecting funds for the legal defense of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who has been accused of leaking sensitive US Military documents to WikiLeaks. This decision came despite the fact that PayPal has not been compelled to take such action by any government agency or body of law, at least not officially.

If you find this decision as outrageous as I, I would invite you to boycott PayPal's services and send them a note detailing why. Below is the message I've just sent to PayPal with full intent to follow through.

RE: Courage To Resist and US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning

Due to PayPal's recent policy decision to suspend the the account of Courage to Resist, a non-profit raising defense funds for US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, (and additionally, previous policy decisions regarding WikiLeaks, et all) PayPal will no longer enjoy my business, the business of people like me, nor, to the extent that my personal and professional influence allow, the business of my professional, personal and familial relations.

Until such time as this policy decision -- to which no legal authority has bound PayPal to implement -- is reversed, I personally will:

- No longer make purchases using paypal as a payment method.
- No longer accept paypal as a payment method for personal transactions.
- No longer accept paypal as a payment method for business transactions.
- No longer conduct business with entities (for example, ebay sellers, web stores) whose only payment method is PayPal and, when I find this to be the case, contact the seller to tell them that their strict alignment with PayPal is the cause of their lost business.
- No longer recommend the services of PayPal to friends, family or anyone else.
- In short, I will no longer conduct business with PayPal in any way.

Furthermore, to the extent that my influence allows, I will seek to discourage all others from conducting business with Paypal in any way, including but not limited to those outlined above, and encourage them to seek out competing payment providers for their transactions.

Finally, I will contact major online retailers who accept PayPal as a preferred means of payment to inform them that PayPal's policy decision is having a direct, negative consequence on their active user base from myself and others like me who view this decision as detestable, and contrary to the freedom of individuals in this and other countries.

All such consequences could have been avoided, had PayPal not made the decision to freeze the account of a non-profit organization collecting defense funds for an American Citizen and Service Member. All such consequences can still be avoided by reversing this decision and releasing due funds in full to Courage to Resist, but until such time as that happens I consider PayPal to be an enemy of Freedom, Due Process, and the Human Right to Conscientiously Object To, and Oppose, what they truly believe to be Unjust.

My PayPal account will remain active for a period of two weeks hence, after such time it will be closed unless PayPal takes action now to resolve this matter in favor of Courage to Resist and US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, issues a public apology, and commits to never again blockade the monetary means (either by witholding funds, or by preventing the collection thereof) to the legal defense of any individual or entity.

With Resolve,

Michael Thompson
[/quote]


Normally I'm not one to send emails and call for boycott -- I'd simply stop doing business with them myself -- nor am I under any illusion that my own individual gesticulations cause them any great concern. But this is really just one decision in a string, of late, which shows me that PayPal is meddling in affairs which it has no moral compunction to be meddling in.

Normally I'm not one to send emails and call for boycott -- I'd simply stop doing business with them myself -- nor am I under any illusion that my own individual gesticulations cause them any great concern. But this is really just one decision in a string, of late, which shows me that PayPal is meddling in affairs which it has no moral compunction to be meddling in.

Paypal is run by people and invested in by people (investors and clients). Whether or not you'd like to think so it will have some moral compass involved in some of its decisions.

Even from just a business standpoint, having something so controversial being funded indirectly through a service they provide could reflect poorly on paypal to its investors and other clients, and it's not like people haven't known that paypal could completely screw you out of your money.

That said, no amount of money is going to help him anyway. In order to charge him all they need to do is find one piece of leaked information that is both classified and pertains to something that is not legally questionable that he let out they can still charge him to the full extent of the law. Being a US service member doesn't help his case at all either as they are under a lot more restrictions than the common public.

That said, no amount of money is going to help him anyway. In order to charge him all they need to do is find one piece of leaked information that is both classified and pertains to something that is not legally questionable that he let out they can still charge him to the full extent of the law. Being a US service member doesn't help his case at all either as they are under a lot more restrictions than the common public.

To be fair, he could be accused with far less evidence than that. But yeah, a conviction on it seems pretty likely given the nature of the case. He fully admits to leaking the documents, and knowing that they were classified military documents, and being troubled by his actions. He has repeatedly publicly admitted to very serious violations US criminal law, US civil violations, and military regulations.

Was it legal? He's stated that he knew it was not, yet did it anyway.

Was it moral? That's a different issue. It might make a difference when it comes to sentencing, but not much when interpreting if the law was broken.


As for them freezing the account, PayPal could do that even they were a bank or other regulated financial institution. Yes they are large enough and have operations such that they should probably be regulated, but that's irrelevant here. The details about what they MAY do and what the MUST do are significant.

A court order can require that they freeze assets. But financial institutions also have the option of temporarily suspending transactions under many different terms, such as any suspicious transactions or pending court action, or even under database maintenance where all assets are frozen for hours at a time. PayPal isn't (currently) regulated as a bank, so they have even more freedom to temporarily restrict access to accounts, or to cancel accounts, at their own discretion.

PayPal is a service -- one which exists to allow me, a customer, to transfer funds to another entity at my own discretion and will. Certainly they should not be forced to collect funds for illegal enterprise, but clearly a non-profit collecting for the legal defense of an individual is *not* an illegal enterprise regardless of whether you or I believe the party to be guilty, and indeed regardless of the party's actual guilt, since everyone is entitled to the best legal defense they can muster. By making this decision, PayPal has foisted itself not only into personal decisions yet unmade by its customers to contribute (by refusing to continue to collect funds), but has muted the decisions already made by its customers who have already given support (by freezing the account of Courage to Resist and withholding their funds).

I am not, and would not, say that they are outside their rights to make any decision they wish, and I further concede that, from one perspective, avoiding the controversy could be construed as being "best for the business". However, if this policy stands they will no longer see any of my dollars, spent or earned, and they will not be skimming their 3% off the top of that, as per usual.

PayPal will surely survive without me, and will surely survive even if they loose 5% of their customers due to this decision (which, of course, will come nowhere near happening) -- but, I will bow out of their service, and encourage others to bow out in suit, and have let them know exactly why this will come to pass. If enough people feel similar, they might just feel the tiniest of pinches to their pocketbooks.

For my own part, I deem their actions contemptible and refuse to contribute to their bottom line, however large or small that contribution would have been.

Google's getting a few other news sites on it now, like http://techcrunch.co...with-wikileaks/ with responses from paypal.

The PayPal version of the story is that they've been asking the company to verify their non-profit status for months. The public statement is that once they meet the paperwork requirement it will be restored. This is the same thing that happened to other non-profits at paypal, a few of them hit the media as well.

[color="#5D5D5D"]“Today’s temporary limitation of the Courage to Resist organization’s PayPal account is due to PayPal regulations requiring non profits to associate a bank account to their PayPal account. It is nothing to do with Wikileaks. Back in December 2010, we permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action. This is not the case with Courage to Resist”[/quote]

I do hope that this is the case, as that would be the best outcome all around. I do still strongly disagree with their policy regarding WikiLeaks as well, however (though it is somehow less detestable when targeted at an amorphous entity, rather than an individual), so I will probably be forced to examine what has become of that decision before determining whether to continue doing business with them.

If nothing else, I can hope that any immediate backlash they experienced serves as a reminder that people are watching their decisions, and that some people care what those decisions may be.

Apparently, PayPal reverted their decision. It's pretty clear that PayPal acted in a despicable manner, but it's good to see that public backlash can have a positive effect relatively quickly.

Ahh the good old Paypal proof of non-profit requirement. They always send it at the worst possible time

Apparently, PayPal reverted their decision. It's pretty clear that PayPal acted in a despicable manner, but it's good to see that public backlash can have a positive effect relatively quickly.

It's nice, but from their website:

• Stop the extreme, inhumane and illegal pre-trial punishment of Bradley Manning
• Ensure that Bradley Manning receives top-notch legal representation from the lawyer of his choice
• Stop any effort by the United States government to hold a secret court martial trial, unchecked by public and media oversight
• Free Bradley Manning![/quote]
  What are they really expecting to pay for?
  
  He's a US service person. He doesn't apply to the same legal situation as the average person. To my knowledge an average run of the mill lawyer won't apply because it's a military trial, court martial trials aren't supposed to be open to the public, and he very clearly broke military law.
  
  I guess in some sense he's lucky we live in the information age, or he probably would have been tried and found guilty of treason and been hanged before anyone knew any better.

I imagine that, if nothing else, the funds will be spent on lawyers outside the case itself filing motions and such in an attempt to prevent his trial being run as a court martial.

There are good reasons to have the court martial system, but I think that its probably a poor system to use when the military has a vested interest in the case to the extent that we have here. I don't necessarily agree that this case should take place in a standard court setting either -- since its likely to involve revealing the non-redacted documents and other sensitive information. I might suggest some sort of congressional hearing, though I don't know that they can impose sentencing, etc and that doesn't really close the issue of the trial being exposed to oversight or make it all that much less vested in finding him guilty.

I don't think there's any doubt that he's guilty to the letter of the law, since he's admitted so, and that he knew it was illegal as well. The question isn't really about guilt, but about whether what he did is deserving of punishment -- a military court martial has no interest in even broaching that question -- they determine guilt and apply, essentially, a wrote punishment for the crime -- which, by the way, depending what they trial him for, could include the death penalty or life in prison.

Can you imagine life in prison or being put to death for a "crime" which has no identifiable victim, and the accusation of actual harm caused is rather dubious. If he had been in the corporate world acting against his employer who was doing shady shit behind the scenes he would be hailed as a hero across the board, and it would be ridiculous to think that his employer could trial him to determine his guilt and punishment.

It's also been theorized, as of late, that WikiLeaks, including some of the documents Pfc. Manning exposed, has contributed to the recent uprisings in the middle east. While its unclear whether this will be good or bad in the long run (Egypt seems to be pro-democracy, Libya on the other hand will probably fall into civil war and end up in god-knows-who's hands when the dust has settled) it is pretty clear that whatever has incited revolution has done more for democracy in the middle east than the past 10 years of war and occupation.

Make no mistake that this witch hunt is more about embarrassing Washington and the Military than about actual, attributable, measurable (or even potential) harm.