The representatives of VISA and Mastercard in Iceland were called in for a meeting with the Althingi parliament’s General Committee today to discuss why these international companies have prevented their customers from supporting Wikileaks.
Inside Althingi. Photo by Páll Kjartansson.
“I suspect that the credit card companies are looking into whether the transactions in question are in accordance with the rules and regulatory framework that the companies follow,” Vidar Thorkelsson, CEO of Valitor, which runs VISA and Mastercard in Iceland, told ruv.is.
He stressed that the Icelandic branch had nothing to do with the decision.
Árni Thór Sigurdsson, chairman of the Left-Green’s parliamentary group, declared the credit card companies’ actions to be a strike against freedom of speech and called for the matter to be discussed in parliament.
A group of around 4,000 hackers called Anonymous attacked the websites of the credit card companies on Wednesday in solidarity with Wikileaks and the website’s founder Julian Assange, who has been arrested on charges of rape. He maintains his innocence.
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