Over the past few years, whistle blowing page Wikileaks has had a lot of financial trouble. Following a scandal in which US military documents were leaked to the site in 2010, several credit card companies, including MasterCard and Visa, cut their ties to Wikileaks. PayPal did the same, taking with them all of the funds on Wikileaks account. Recently, they launched a donation campaign which prompts the user when trying to access Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files, which contain more than 5 million emails from security company Stratfor.
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The donation campaign took the form of an overlay which asked for donations, tweets and shares before letting the users access the files. When Anonymous got wind of this, they immediately made a public announcement via twitter demanding that the overlay be removed, labeling it a "paywall": "We call on @WikiLeaks to change their current set up to force donations. #InformationWantsToBeFree,"
Wikileaks responded by saying that the overlay didnt force anyone to pay, and that the page overlay could be closed at any time. Nevertheless, the donation campaign has now been taken offline, and the site is accessible as normal again. What is perhaps a little strange regarding the event is that Anonymous has always been a supporter of Wikileaks and well aware of its money troubles. After the financial cut-off the site experienced in 2010, Anonymous responded by launching a series of DDoS attacks on the financial services who had banned Wikileaks.
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