PayPal Responds to WikiLeaks Controversy

On December 4, PayPal announced that it had permanently restricted the account of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. At the time, the reason the company gave was that Assange had violated the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits using a PayPal account to promote or facilitate illegal activity.

PayPal Vice President of Platform, Mobile and New Ventures Osama Bedier elaborated on the company’s actions when pressed on stage at the LeWeb conference in Paris. He started by explaining the process the company takes for these decisions. “We have an acceptable use policy group,” Bedier explained, “to make sure that our customers are protected.” PayPal evaluates different situations and complaints to figure out whether someone is violating its acceptable use policy.

The acceptable use policy group had to address Julian Assange and WikiLeaks when the U.S. State Department issued a letter on November 27 stating that the activity of the WikiLeaks organization was deemed illegal in the U.S. “It was straightforward,” Bedier said, once the State Department made that declaration.

Bedier was also asked by The Telegraph’s Milo Yiannopoulos whether he was worried about hackers retaliating against PayPal for closing down Assange’s account, referring to recent attacks against it and Mastercard. The PayPal VP’s response was that hackers have always targeted the company, since it is one of the most successful payments companies in the world, and that this was no different.

http://mashable.com/2010/12/08/paypal-responds-to-wikileaks-controversy/