The cyberwar waged over the detention of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange took a legal turn overnight even as the credit card companies targeted for disruption fended off renewed assaults from a shadowy collective of hackers.
Wikileaks' Iceland payment processor Datacell ehf took legal action against Mastercard and Visa for breaching its terms of service with the provider by blocking payments to the whistleblowers' website for a week, although that could be extended.
Credit card companies were contacted for comment and were expected to release statements today.
"The suspension of payments towards Wikileaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers," Datacell ehf chief executive officer Andreas Fink posted to the company's website last night.
"Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to Wikileaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish."
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Fink said outraged credit card holders were contacting the payment processor "in masses" demanding the right to pledge their financial aid to the embattled publisher that raised the ire of world governments for starting to reveal more than 250,000 US diplomatic despatches.
"It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down," Fink said.
"We strongly believe a world-class company such as Visa should not get involved by politics and just simply do their business where they are good at. Transferring money.
"They have no problem transferring money for other businesses such as gambling sites, pornography services and the like so why a donation to a website which is holding up for human rights should be morally any worse than that is outside of my understanding."
Fink said credit card companies were causing great damage to their brands and suggested those who wanted to donate should use wire transfers.
"And make sure your local Visa partner knows that it is your sincere wish to donate to Wikileaks using your Visa card," he said. "We will do our best in the meantime to support Wikileaks."
Tango down: Mastercard
Overnight, Anonymous, a collective of hackers in control of bot armies of thousands of infected computers around the world, renewed its assault on Mastercard, taking down its website, which is still suffering disruptions this morning.
Reports suggested payment processing and merchant facilities may also be affected.
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