Ethics Assignment

Operation Payback


In 2010 Anonymous decided to attack and disable the major online payment methods, such as master card and paypal because they blocked funding towards Wikileaks who released thousands of diplomatic cables / classified US files. They did this because there was no way to process payments anymore towards Wikileaks whereas it was still possible to support other internet groups such as neo nazi groups etc.

There was a lot of controversy on this argument, but the point that Anonymous was trying to prove was that Wikileaks had done a good thing and didn't had to be discriminated for their actions.

Was this the right thing to do?

Maybe, or maybe not. Due to their attack they blocked the service that those providers were offering to the entire community/users that were using them. So perhaps, what they did was yes, to prove a point, but at the end, they affected thousands of users that didn't take part to the actions of those companies. It's kind of if we take an example of what is happening today. Is it ok that war refugees are not accepted or looked as antagonists due to the actions of a few people that share their heritage?

Maybe here the question is, did Paypal and MasterCard do the right thing?

At that point I would say no. In the documentary they saw, as mentioned before, that access to fund many neo nazi / socialist groups was never blocked from those companies. Does this mean that Wikileaks is worst than those groups? Is Wikileaks a huge threat to people, or is it a threat to government only?