Good Game Mastercard, Good game.

"Hackers rushed to the defense of WikiLeaks on Wednesday, launching attacks on MasterCard, Visa, Swedish prosecutors, a Swiss bank and others who have acted against the site and its jailed founder Julian Assange.

Internet "hacktivists" operating under the label "Operation Payback" claimed responsibility in a Twitter message for causing severe technological problems at the website for MasterCard, which pulled the plug on its relationship with WikiLeaks a day ago.

MasterCard acknowledged "a service disruption" involving its Secure Code system for verifying online payments, but spokesman James Issokson said consumers could still use their credit cards for secure transactions. Later Wednesday, Visa's website was inaccessible.

The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site's Facebook page hit 1 million fans.

Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack."

It's interesting when you think about it. A group of hackers went out and stood up for the freedom of speech. Also, it's what happens when a clearly government pressured company pulls ties from a public site that people actually like. How can I say it was government pressured? Because it's fairly obvious. A company like Mastercard or Paypal don't just close an account because they don't like you, or for no reason at all. There's obviously a nested reason why they'd do something like that.

You also have to think about it like this. All the information that was procured by WikiLeaks was completely published to their site in its entirety. At this point, anyone who wanted that information or was curious about it has probably saved or looked at it. At this point, trying forcefully to starve the site of money just makes you look bad. Perhaps there's a message to be sent to people like WikiLeaks, but if you want to make a clear message, attacking from the shadows isn't the way to do it.

Either way.. Interesting Stuff indeed!