The AP reports that a Swedish company Visa Europe hired to study whether WikiLeaks was breaking the law or Visa’s own rules has “found no proof the group’s fundraising arm is breaking the law in its home base of Iceland.” But, the AP goes on, Visa will not accept WikiLeaks donations until it completes its own investigation, which has thus far lasted eight weeks.
Shorter Visa: “we’re going to keep investigating this until we find some justification to explain why we’ll accept donations to the Ku Klux Klan but not WikiLeaks.”
Now, this says one of two things about Visa.
Either, Visa is saying it arbitrarily will decide to stop doing business with any customer it chooses until such time as it proves that customer is innocent. Imagine the absurdity of standing at a check-out counter while Visa not only does a criminal background check, but scrambles with its lawyers to invent new legal theories by which you might be breaking the law.
Or, Visa has stopped processing Wikieaks donations at the behest of the U.S. government based on lies. And even after the government admitted that it had told lies to shut down WikiLeaks, Visa continues to stall for time to come up with an adequate explanation for why it’s doing so.