Wikileaks and money, Peter Sunde chimes in

One of the founder of Flattr, Peter Sunde, just posted his thoughts on Wikileaks and money on his personal blog. The post was inspired by today’s news that 10 months after being shut off by the likes of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and Bank of America Wikileaks has run out of money as the funds donated to them are frozen on payments provider’s accounts. You can still support them via Flattr.

It’s worth reposting parts of Peter’s post here:

I’ve been quite annoyed with WikiLeaks and the money. I’ve been sad, but I do understand the reasons to it, that it’s been so hard to get full disclosure of the money. Showing the world whom you pay money to for secure and private hosting is obviously like giving out the secrecy, so it’s quite hard to be transparent about that. Still, I want to know where my money goes when I donate to any sort of organisation. I’m also been sad that not more money has been donated to the Bradley Manning Foundation — more was promised then was given. I demand a high standard for organisations like WikiLeaks because they should not have places to attack. If you deal with open cards, you’re less vulnerable to any attack.

/…/

In my world, you’re not convicted until your actually convicted. A suspicion against you should not leave you without your rights. When you’re under pending trial or conviction, it’s still just pending. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

/…/

And today, again, I’m so proud to see that this (Flattr) is working. Even though I have a love-hate type of relationship to WikiLeaks, and some of my other co-workers at Flattr as well, we all stand up for the right of WikiLeaks to use our system. It’s a separate thing from any personal views. It’s a political view based on equal rights, the right to a fair trial and the right to partake in society as a peer.

/…/

It doesn’t really matter if you like WikiLeaks or not. It’s about allowing private companies to decide if there is a WikiLeaks or not. The judges should be the people — and possibly courts — but never a for-profit company.

You can support Wikileaks by clicking the normal Flattr button or donating a larger sum.